


The Space Left By You

by AnOddSock



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Blood and Gore, Bondage, Breaking Conditioning, Conditioning, Feelings, Forced Nudity, Forced blowjobs, HYDRA Trash Party, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Isolation, Loss of Identity, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mutual Non-Con, No Lube, Painful Sex, Public Humiliation, Public Nudity, Sensory Deprivation, Sexual Abuse, Whump, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, hurt and a bit of comfort, vivesection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:35:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22091176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/pseuds/AnOddSock
Summary: Bucky Barnes is a mess of splintered memories and living a tortured reality, so when a man appears in his prison cell and declares himself to be an angel, he isn't sure whether to believe it or not. But with this watching apparition his only source of comfort he grows to rely on the calming presence, until one day he asks for something that neither of them will come out the other side of unscathed.Half a lifetime later the tables turn and suddenly the angel is at his mercy. With his memories gone there's nothing between them except the ability to cause pain and the ability to withstand it. Every choice has a ripple effect and everything they do, and have done, whips up a maelstrom, but the angel won't leave him again no matter what.
Relationships: Bucky Barnes/Castiel, Bucky Barnes/others
Comments: 25
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [【授权翻译】The Space Left By You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23513281) by [STaantler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/STaantler/pseuds/STaantler)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an incredibly self indulgent fic, I had a need to see these two together and if you want a thing done right, you have to do it yourself!
> 
> And it is... painful. Cas, in this first chapter, is not entirely the Cas we know from Supernatural Canon because he hasn't learned to be his own person yet, and he's still pretty much blindly following orders. He hurts Bucky in a way that Bucky specifically asks for, but it is still an undesired and noncon situation, so if that's too much for you, no hard feelings if you click away now.  
> Their relationship is messy and full of mutual trauma, but I wanted to show what could grow between them despite that. However this fic won't explore much of recovery, that's not the story I wanted to tell.
> 
> If you need to skip the HYDRA Trash Party portions I will put spoilers in each chapter's end notes for the sections to skip - with a short explanation of the content.
> 
> Thank you Bubbles for the beta read and help, and my discord server for all your encouragement <3

The man is back again. He always comes back but there never seems to be a pattern as to when, or why, or for how long he stays. Sometimes he’s around for days, standing at the side of the room as the torture and the experiments and the freezing cold go on around him like a storm that can’t touch him. Other times it’s barely a glimpse, a few blinks at most, a minute maybe less. 

He is a shape and an illusion that comes and goes on the whims of unknown gods, or perhaps at the whims of Bucky’s breaking mind. Because that's what he wonders now: is the man even real?

He’s wondered it countless times before because if the man was real the soviets would have seen him, cried out in alarm, dragged him from the cell, reacted somehow, somewhen; and they never have. Not even once.

So the man must be a part of Bucky’s mind, he’s decided; must be a figment of his imagination, something he’s dreaming up so he’s not alone.

Alone is bad. Alone is all there is. It would make sense if his brain cracked like an egg and the goop that came out was some kind of omnipresent watcher, a stalwart buddy to accompany him through hell. Or… whatever passes for hell in this endless Russian nightmare.

Because he’s alone now, except for the man. Alone and tired — always so very tired. He’s not even chained up anymore, they stopped that when he became too weak to fight back. He used to rush at the door every time it opened and grit his teeth through elbows, fists, and nails as he tried to scrape and scratch his way to the other side of the prison bars. Even when he learned there were more doors after this one, and more corridors, and too many guards, and too many weapons. He’d never make it even if he still had all his limbs. Just fighting to cross the threshold at his own insistence, looking for that tiny victory, was something he kept up for a long time. 

Not anymore.

Now he cringes away when footsteps come, he curls tighter into a ball and hopes they’ll pass him by. He tries to cling to the walls and the floor and himself and he always, always fails.

So, no chains, and no restraints and no-one else; just Bucky, and the man.

He rolls his tired head from side to side, trying to look at the man from different angles and see if he can pinpoint the way his brain is making him up. The man stands there frowning, concerned, and when he curls his hands into fists Bucky laughs. It’s such a Steve move, the stance and the upward lift of the chin, it becomes obvious that’s where his mind is drawing from.

“Hi, Stevie. Strange face you’re wearing.”

The man walks to the other side of the room, near the door, and Bucky flinches.

“Don’t.”

The man looks at him for a long moment.

“S’better when it’s just you and me.”

The man cocks his head to the right… and that’s… not Steve.

“Hey, if you’re a hallucination can you talk?” Bucky’s voice is raspy from misuse, from screaming. It adds to the surreal nature of the moment, because he doesn’t sound like himself either. “I suppose if you do, it’ll just be like talkin’ to myself anyhow.”

“I’m not a hallucination,” the man says, and his voice is like gravel, like wind in the rafters. 

“Oh.” Bucky isn’t sure what else to say. “I guess that’s what a hallucination would say, though.”

The man walks over, and Bucky tries to back up, instinct kicking into overdrive. 

“I won’t hurt you.”

He touches Bucky’s forehead for a moment and something in Bucky eases. Some pain recedes, his muscles unclench, his stomach stops griping at him. He gawps.

“What are you?”

“I’m an angel.”

And then the man is gone. Disappeared. Maybe he dreamed up the reprieve of his injuries too, maybe he’s losing his mind quicker than he thought.

* * *

The man comes back though, again, still. Over and over. Once when he’s crying, pain riddled and arching through spasms of agony on the cold operating table he sees the man, stony face and tussled hair there in between blinks, and he cries harder and reaches out his fingers.

The surgeons laugh and slap his hand and he looks through streaming eyes for comfort from the one thing in the room that’s never hurt him. The stony resolve on the face of the angel doesn’t waver, but he holds his gaze until he passes out.

He — the man? Angel? Hallucination? Whoever he is, and Bucky can’t decide which is true — is gone when Bucky wakes in his cell.

* * *

Shivering in racking tremors he curls tighter around himself, and tries to conserve warmth. His breath fogs the air and he thinks it’s pretty, in a distant sort of way. He’s been alone a lot, lately. Something else must be using the soviet’s time because he’s been mostly ignored. But it means no fever pain to keep him warm through the freezing nights and no change to the monotony of the empty cell and he knows he must be slipping further away if he’s starting to miss the torture.

He laughs with rattling little breaths that hurt his lungs and smacks his forehead against the wall, once, just hard enough he hopes it might put him out for the night.

It doesn’t.

He hears wing flaps though, and a swoosh of movement, and he knows what he’ll see before he turns.

“Hey, long time no see.”

He gets no reply.

“Angels don’t talk much, I guess. Could do with a rousing conversation. Maybe a sing song, bet you only know hymns though.”

No response.

“I… I knew hymns too, once. S’all gone now. Like soup up here, they keep stirring it up.” He uncurls his arm and taps his head. “Hey, if you’re really an angel can you like… get a message to God or anything?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“Well that’s a crappy system. What about to… to another person?”

“Who would you communicate with?”

“I…” he knows there are people, he’s held on to the idea of them. That there’s something to keep fighting for, but their faces blur into one— and then none— and their names are hard to grasp. “Anyone?”

“I’m not supposed to,” the man says. “It would be against protocol.”

“Just gonna watch huh? Get your rocks off that way?”

“There are no… rocks.”

“Still don’t believe you’re real.”

“You have seen me many times.”

“Seen a lot of things buddy, doesn’t mean much anymore.”

The man looks upset, at that. Which is strange given what he must witness here, what he’s seen Bucky suffer through. Maybe it’s just Bucky reflecting his own grief back at himself, maybe the man is a mirror for his own inner demons, unless angels really are real, he’s still not sure he believes. “Where do you go when you’re not here?”

“Many places. My role is to observe, gather information.”

“What intel are you getting here, how best to break a man? What scalpels do to someone’s insides? Who the most handsome S.O.B in all the soviet prisons is?” he chuckles at his own joke, but it falls flat, really. 

“I am not sure, the information is given and then…”

“And then?”

“And then I gather more.”

The man squints, looks confused suddenly. Bucky knows that look, knows it from how it feels when his own face has made it countless times over — the man doesn’t know, or doesn’t remember. 

“Being an angel sounds crappy.”

“No more so than this.”

Bucky looks tiredly around his cell. “Yeah, not exactly livin’ the high life am I?”

“You are five hundred and thirty six feet above sea level, at present.”

Bucky’s eyes widen. “You know where I am?” He has hope, suddenly and without scepticism, that what the angel says is true — that he’s an honest to god divine being, and he’s here to help.

“Naturally.”

“Tell someone!”

The man shakes his head. “Technically, you shouldn’t even see me, I shouldn’t allow it.”

He disappears and Bucky screams after him. “Wait! Wait! Come back! Please, don’t go! I won’t tell, I won’t tell, don’t leave me alone!”

Guards rush in, and sedate him, and as he drifts into unconsciousness he thinks he got his wish after all — to be put to sleep. Maybe the angel does answer prayers.

* * *

“You got a name?” He asks, the next time he sees the man — angel, whatever.

“Castiel.”

Bucky rolls it around his mouth. “Sounds kinda… Russian?”

“It is not.”

“Okay Castiel. Can you, umm.” He falters. What should he ask for? “Can you do something for me?”

“That would depend on the nature of your request, I cannot intervene.”

“Can you tell me  _ why?” _

“Why, what?”

“Why  _ anything? _ Why me, why here, why this — what does any of it achieve? What does you being here achieve if you won’t help?”

“Helping is not in my orders, or permitted. But you were suffering and alone, and I did not — do not — like it.”

“So help me!”

They’re facing each other, Bucky stands on shaky legs. He’s nude. They took his clothes yesterday and didn’t give them back. There’s been changes, he’s foggy on the details like he is with everything else these days, but he doesn’t recognise the guards anymore and the scientists are more focused and the one time recently he saw a man in high ranking uniform he was leering and handsy. 

Things are going south. Further south. He’s not just an experiment anymore, he’s not just a test, or a specimen. He’s…  _ meat _ , and they want to devour him. He can smell the desire on them, and he fears it. He doesn’t remember much of his life anymore, but he remembers the looks on men’s faces who did heinous things and he knows what it means.

“Please, I’m begging you, take me with you. I can’t,” his voice cracks. “I can’t hold out much longer.”

“I’m sorry, truly. But this… this is meant to happen.”

It shocks him and he sinks to the floor. “Meant?  _ Why?” _

“For the future, what they will turn you into, I think, it is important.”

“I don’t want it,” he whispers. 

“No man wants great things.”

“I won’t be a great thing though, will I? I’ll just be mindless, or hopeless, or  _ gone.” _

“Your memories are not intact?” Castiel muses, tipping his head sideways.

“Taken you this long to work that out? Some angel you are.” He shivers, again, and wraps a protective hand around the newest and least healed incision in his side.

“I knew it would happen, but the rapid pace is… more than I anticipated.”

“Oh goodie, take some notes, please. It’s all anyone ever does for me.”

“I could heal that?” Castiel gestures to his abdomen.

Bucky shakes his head, “They’ll only reopen it. If you can regrow arms though, I am missing one.”

It’s Castiel’s turn to shake his head.

“Will you stay with me?”

“I can, yes.”

The angel offers no comfort other than his presence, and it stings. But he supposes if he got used to extra warmth, or a kind touch, it would be worse when he had to be without again. 

* * *

He’s been poked and prodded and leered at for days. Men — soldiers, guards, technicians, all manner of uniformed officers — keep coming and looking at his naked body. Gripping his chin and looking in his mouth.

Twice, they’ve held him steady and pried his jaw open and men shoved their dicks into him. And that’s not new exactly — he recalls, vaguely, bargaining for more rations or more blankets, or less pain with the gift of his mouth way back when — but this, now, this is different, this isn’t even pleasure this is just… control. This is just degrading; they don’t want  _ him,  _ they just want what he has, what they can take.

His eyes keep leaking and he doesn’t know why. Through blurry vision he sees Castiel appear and he smiles, despite himself.

The angel looks him over with concern. “You are hurting?”

“Not so much.”

“Tears are a sign of pain, or distress.”

“Chalk it up to that second one then.”

“They have moved up their time frame,” Castiel says. “And their agenda has shifted.”

“Seems like.”

“This is progress, this will put you on your path.”

“This fucking  _ sucks, _ is what. You could stop it but you  _ don’t. _ ”

“Do not think to question me!” Castiel raises to his full height and his wings unfurl in shadowed form behind him. “I am not to blame, my role is to watch, to witness.”

Bucky laughs, mirthless and loud. “Witness this, jackass.” He holds up his middle finger and spits.

Castiel only frowns, and sighs. “This is not my doing. I cannot…”

“I know.”

“I am… sorry. I’m not supposed to be, but I am.”

“I know that too.” Bucky looks at him, seeking surety, looking for comfort. All he sees is hardline stoicism, and sad eyes. “They’re going to hurt me worse aren’t they?”

“I think, yes.”

“They’re going to… going to…” he gulps. “To… rape me. Aren’t they?”

Castiel’s eyes glow brightly, and his nose flares as he breathes. He looks furious, furious enough to kill. Bucky finds he isn’t scared of that; of death, or of Castiel. The intensity lessens, and softens to nothing when Castiel looks back at Bucky, and nods solemnly.

“I am unhappy to say, yes, it would appear so. Humans invent so many ways to hurt each other.”

Bucky sniffs, swipes his hand across his eyes. “Stupid to be afraid of anything, anymore. But… I am. It’s the last,” his breath catches, he swallows. “The last piece of me, I’ll be gone, done, they’ll take everything.”

Castiel reaches a hand out, to soothe and Bucky leans into it. “Your fate is very cruel. I would not wish it for you, for anyone.”

“I just don’t want to hurt anymore,” he admits. It feels cowardly to admit it, to even think it. It’s something he only ever looks at in the dark, in the night when everything feels worse and he can allow himself to wallow in all that he's lost. He doesn’t know who he was before all this, but he knows he wants to be brave, and supposes he must have always wanted that. But pain is wearing, and his resolve is paper thin now. 

“I can remove pain…” Castiel hedges.

“But not remove me from here, which would be better.” Bucky moves, crawling away. He wants nothing to do with the angel, not when he won’t help, not when he leaves Bucky in this squalor. He doesn’t want Castiel to leave either, though.

He stops in the pool of moonlight that filters through the high bars of his cell. His skin looks blue under its glow. He feels like he could turn neon bright and effervescent if he sat in it long enough. They sit in silence for a long time, as Bucky grows a little braver, a little calmer. An idea plays around his mind. In the dark, with the angel, all alone but not so terrified… he wonders if he’s crazy to think it, or if it’s crazy enough that it might just help.

“You could do it,” he says, addressing the floor.

“Do what?” he hears the angel walk closer.

He licks his lips, lets his over-long hair fall across his face, but turns. “Take me first.”

“I cannot take you away from here.”

“No.” he huffs, rolling his eyes. “Take me… like they will. Fuck me first.”

The room goes very still, like neither of them are breathing. Maybe angels don’t breathe. Maybe he will never take another breath, now the words are out and he can’t take them back.

“That would go against my nature.” 

“All of this goes against my nature, none of this is natural.” He shivers, and it isn’t the cold; images and ideas, terror at what it would be like flit across his mind. The worry of someone coming into his cell to hurt him further when he’s already endured torture is chilling.

"I have no wish to hurt you."

"You are hurting me by leaving me here with them, by not stopping it, by not even  _ trying _ . At least… at least you could hurt me in a way that will help."

Would it help? Really? The unknown is part of the horror, part of his fear. If it had already happened once, at the hands of an angel… Would that be better?

"You are asking me to have sex with you. Me. An angel of the Lord, debase myself with a human?"

"Seems like you're already down here in the muck with us, might as well go all the way. You can give a full report back to your superiors about what it's really like." He laughs, as he says it, it's all so ridiculous.

"Bucky," Castiel says, and Bucky turns to look over his shoulder to see who Castiel’s addressing before he remembers that that's  _ his  _ name _. _ His  **name.** No one has used his name in so very, very long. He weeps anew, a little hiccuping sob. 

"I'm losing it man, you gotta.. you have'ta help me." His mind circles back around to the question at hand. "But no," he pushes onto his back and stares at the ceiling. "I'm not asking to have sex with you because I don't want this. I'm asking you to fuck me anyway, so that the first time I'm raped isn't by some Russian bastard. So it's by someone…" he was going to say someone he trusts but that sounds all kinds of wrong. ".... someone else."

Castiel stands over him, tall, strong. Bucky feels like he’s cowering, and maybe he is. His body is heavy, feels like there’s leaden weights dragging on his limbs and making it hard to get air into his lungs.

“I want to help you. If this will help…”

“Please, thank you.” he trembles head to foot, drags a shaky hand across his mouth.

“You’re afraid.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“I haven’t been afraid in a very long time.” Castiel gets to one knee, and reaches for his thigh, and he freezes. “But yes, I would be. I won’t hurt you.”

Bucky scrambles backwards with his one arm, his heels digging into the floor to propel him across the space. He can’t do it, suddenly, he can’t.

“Bucky?”

“Don’t, please don’t,” he gasps. And then curses himself. He has to do this, he knows it in his gut, it has to happen when, where and how he chooses. He takes hold of his resolve and wraps it around his heart. He can be brave, one more time. “You have to do it like they would. You can’t be… nice. I have to know, before it’s for real, what… what to expect.”

Castiel frowns, his mouth downturned. “I have no desire to hurt you.”

“I know, that’s why I can let you.”

Castiel leans over him and grips his wrist. It’s a strong hold, he can feel the bones in his arm grinding together, and gasps, looking at the place the angel holds him. 

“Are you sort of… super strong?”

“I’m an angel, I have power you can barely comprehend.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, he really doesn’t want a lesson in the cosmic order at this moment. 

“Turn over,” Castiel says calmly.

He looks up with panicked eyes, trying to inch away. The grip remains strong and the angel pulls him closer by his wrist.

“Turn over, or do you want me to make you?”

He whimpers, and hangs his head. “I’m not sure…”

“I am; you asked and now I know what you need. Turn. Over.” Castiel squeezes his arm tightly and then let’s go, giving him room to twist onto his stomach. His breath comes short, his heart pounds and holding upright on one elbow is difficult with the pain and weakness he’s in so he drops onto his stomach with a dull thud.

Looking over his shoulder he sees Castiel undoing his pants, pushing the fabric aside.

“You know what you’re doing? Have you done this before?”

“I have existed for eons, I have seen enough to know.” Castiel falters, and smiles a little. “If you had asked me to make it… pleasant, I may be at more of a loss, but I understand the mechanics.”

“Will… will anyone hear us?”

“We won’t be interrupted.”

Castiel covers him, leaning over his hips, one hand either side of Bucky’s ass. Bucky’s soft cock lays out on the cold stone between his legs. His legs that he presses together tightly, as firmly closed as his lips, as his eyes.

A hand touches his thigh and he jolts, eyes open, scrambling forward. Castiel clamps his hand over Bucky’s hips and holds him still. He pants against the floor, his arm curled under his chest after trying to crawl forwards.

“Bucky, you have to breathe.”

“Hmm hmm.” He nods, agreeing, though breath is hard to come by. He tries to remind himself that this is what he asked for, and what he needs, and will be easier than anything else heading his way. He should savour this, the warmth of touch from someone who cares… At least, he thinks Castiel cares.

Knees nudge his own legs apart, and he gasps, lifting up instinctively. Raising his ass is the worst plan in the world as Castiel hauls his hips backwards at the same moment and with his knees on the same spot on the floor now he’s got his ass stuck up and out and he’s practically folded in half.

His hand scrabbles against the concrete, and he raises his head, trying to buck away. A palm between his shoulder blades pushes him back down and he goes pliant, floppy limbs falling to stillness.

“Stop fighting me.”

“I’m trying.”

“You could not win, do not waste your energy.”

Castiel is right, even if there wasn’t angel strength involved Bucky hasn’t been fighting fit in far too long.

Something hard and hot pushes between the cheeks of his ass and a strangled noise leaves his throat. His hole is offered up, waiting, but not ready. He’s not ready, not ready at all.

“Wait!”

He tries to wiggle free, to get loose, but Castiel grabs his hand when he half twists and pulls it up behind his back. Castiel pulling his arm in the socket hurts and it’s also leverage and holds him still against the floor when Castiel pushes forward with his weight.

“This is what they would do, they would make you.”

“Yes,” he gasps.

“Then that is what I will do, yes?”

“I’m… I’m scared.”

“I know, hush, it will be over before long and then you will know what to expect in the future.”

The cock at his ass is barely even leaking but it is hard, so at least Castiel is prepared. His hole is too tight, and the press of the cock head there makes his eyes go wide, it’ll never fit. Cas uses his free hand to spread Bucky’s legs wider, and then pulls his cheeks apart. He thrusts forwards and his cock nudges Bucky’s hole harder.

Bucky whines. “It’s not gonna, it won’t!”

“Give it time.”

He struggles and the angel clamps a hand on the back of his neck. There’s another thrust and his hole is spread by the insistent push. It doesn’t hurt, yet, it’s just beginning but Castiel keeps pressing and keeps going and then the pain flares up sudden and strong.

And not just hurt, it feels strange, wrong. Like everything is upside down and backward and in a way it is; his face is pressed to the floor and his ass is being speared open and it feels like the opposite of what should happen to his body.

The skin inside his ass feels like it’s burning, the friction too much, too dry. And as the cock retreats it only feels worse, like his insides are being dragged backwards — outwards — with the pull of it. Castiel eases back and forth, a little in and a little out and the pain doesn’t stop. It gets worse, it’s gets brighter, and Bucky keens. 

He tries to jolt free but he’s pressed down in so many ways he has nowhere to go.

“It hurts!” he yells. 

It doesn’t stop anything. Castiel keeps surging forward and drawing back and every time he goes a little deeper, gets a little further in. Bucky clenches and that makes it so much worse, and his body recoils, flinches, and he clenches again and again and every time is agony against the intrusion. He feels it, deep within himself, the press and push and wide heavy throb of something that shouldn’t be there.

“Please, please stop,” he babbles.

“Would they? Will they?”

“No,” he sobs, and draws breath, and sobs again. “Never, they never ever stop.”

“Just think about now, I am here. That’s all.”

Now isn’t good though, now hurts. It hurts in a way that’s so intimate and so new, and so raw and it isn’t stopping. His knees scrape on the stone floor and his shoulder strains against the pull on his arm and his head throbs and through it all he’s being fucked dry and hard.

Castiel is consistent and methodical, each thrust measured, and even with all that control it still hurts. It opens him up wider and he feels like it must be the end soon, there can’t be more. And then something inside him gives, tears, splits and he screams as it breaks asunder. It’s like sandpaper or needles or knives or hot coals, he doesn’t know, can’t tell one sensation from another. He thrashes wildly, incoherent, everything in his being pinpointing down to his ass and his insides and the way it pulses pain right up his spine and through his stomach.

His arm is free and he scratches at the ground, fingernails digging in, grabbing for purchase that isn’t there. He tries to push up and get away but there’s a hand on his shoulder, and the one on his neck moves up to tangle into his hair and he’s held down while the man behind him pounds into him without pause. 

“Get off, get off, Castiel! Stop!”

“Shh, learn to control your mouth.” It’s punctuated with a harsh thrust that drives Castiel all the way inside him, he feels the other man’s body pressed flushed to his own and he collapses inward on himself. That must be the end, right? Castiel stills, and they rock slightly together as they breath in tandem. “Would they let you beg? Would they tolerate you screaming?”

“I don’t know.” Tears streak his face, and he doesn’t remember crying, but it hurts so damn much he’s not surprised.

“You must understand — they do not care for you, they will expect things of you that you are unable to give.”

He nods mutely.

“With me, you can be whatever you need. I will not admonish you. But I will not lie to you either.”

He cries openly, chest heaving in a sob that only makes him more aware of being split open.

“Will it always hurt this much?” He grits out.

“If they do it like this yes, but they may decide to make it easier on themselves. Humans have ways of easing into this type of situation. If they want they can make sure they do not damage you.”

“I heal,” he gasps through a fresh wave of pain. “I heal quicker than most, now.”

There’s a long pause behind him and he half turns to look. Castiel’s face is cast in shadow and downturned and his shoulders slump. “I know.”

They understand, they both know; there would be no need to be gentle with Bucky’s body.

“Would you like me to finish, now?” Castiel asks, looking up to meet his eye.

“Aren’t we done?”

“No,” Castiel says, sighing. “I have only made you capable of taking my girth, if you want me to fuck to completion I must do that now.”

Bucky thinks he goes mad for half a second as reality sinks in, and then he nods and closes his eyes. Castiel moves slowly, but doesn’t release his grip on Bucky’s head or shoulder, and he can feel the bruises growing beneath the hands that hold him.

The thrusts are painful, but the pain doesn’t get any worse, it just spreads through more of him with every movement. Castiel grunts, punctuating each harder thrust with a deep throaty sound. 

Bucky’s strength has given out and though his knees are under him he slumps. As Castiel fucks toward orgasm he slowly slides lower to the floor. He ends up splayed across the ground, stomach cold and dragging with friction as the tender skin makes contact with the floor, and his bones knock hard against the stone. His chest is rubbed raw with the pressure of his hips being slightly lifted by Castiel’s hands. He flops back and forth with every jolt, crying out at the hurt and the fear.

He tries not to think ahead or picture a future where he gets used to this. He’s with the angel, he’s being given a way to acclimatise to this new torment in the kindest way, and he tries to remember that. Mostly, though, he just wishes it would stop.

It seems to take forever, and Castiel is smothering him by the end, trying to hold him up around the waist so he isn’t crushed. His legs are shaking and he feels wet between his cheeks, and the sound has become louder, slapping of skin that sounds wetter — a liquid squelching noise.

The moonlight has slipped off his body and he watches the light glinting off the floor, something so innocent, and so otherworldly. He huffs a laugh, because there's an honest to god angel ruining his ass, and you couldn’t get any more unbelievable than that.

Eventually, when he feels so tired he thinks he might be dreaming or slipping between the cracks of consciousness, he hears a soft bellowing grunt and feels the pulsing in his ass that means it’s come to an end. As it happens, something pulses  _ though him. _ A cool, welcome blast of energy that soothes his aches and lessens the pain and he sighs against the ground, pleased with the outcome. He feels lax, almost… sated? His mind is clear as a bell, the fog of tiredness momentarily lifted.

He burns hot as he realises something about Castiel’s treatment gave him relief, shame and humiliation wrap themselves around his being, interweave with his knowledge of who he is. It changes him, he knows this deeply, without question.

He pants, licks his dry lips and waits for Castiel to pull out.  _ Pull out, dammit. _ He clenches everything, waiting for it, and it worsens the barely-soothed hurts so that when Castiel does pull free he almost blacks out.

Castiel waits patiently for his desperate hurt-induced wheezing to stop. He tries to curl up and it aches so much worse upon moving that he just lays belly down and brings his arm up to cushion his face.

He doesn’t know what to say.

“Bucky…”

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he sounds angry, and he is, but somehow it’s not at the angel. “I asked.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have listened,” he can hear the uncertainty in Castiel’s voice.

“At least I know now, what it’s like.”

“Does it help?”

“No.”

Because it really, really doesn’t.

“It ends, all things end,” Castiel says, brushing fingertips over his shoulder lightly.

“Don’t touch me!” He lurches away with one last burst of adrenaline coursing through him, knocking his knees against the floor in his hurry to move, his head swims and he stops a foot further away. 

“I shouldn’t have asked,” he whispers, wishing he never had. Knowing he had to, and hating it, hating his own inner honesty that reminds him that this was the better option. Better than waiting for someone who would laugh and be cruel, and taunt him, or torture him at the same time. Or for there to be more than one at once, or one after another or…

“I wish it were all different. Humanity, this plan, this life.” Castiel's words bring him out of his reverie and he flinches.

“Me too.”

“I am sorry I hurt you,” he hears the pain in the angel's voice and marvels at it. Isn’t he the one who’s in pain? “I only ever want to help people, and they do not let me.”

“You care, that’s… that’s a start.” He tries to believe it, but his raw ass, bruises, and scraped knees remind him caring doesn’t always mean a whole lot.

“Please let me fix it.”

“Didn’t you already? I felt… I felt something?”

Castiel pauses, tips his head. “I… didn’t realise that it was potent enough to be felt. There was a release, upon…. upon my completion; the pleasure sparked my grace to flare, the healing properties became heightened. I was not fully in control. You felt that?”

“Mmhmm, like it burned away some of the pain.” 

“Well, it was involuntary, I tried to reign it in, if I had known it would make you feel good I would have let it loose. Please, let me heal you properly?”

Something in him sags, gives way, to know his relief was physiological and tangible, that it makes sense. He wants more though, wants that revitalising feeling to flow through his whole body so he nods to Castiel’s question, and turns back, and Castiel shuffles nearer. Cool white light suffuses him, and he breathes it in like fresh snow on the air. It spreads through him, easing the pain, and he wants to whoop and holler but all he does is keep breathing. Castiel removes the pain, the damage, and leaves him whole and clean… and yet it’s still not enough.

He’s been broken in now, like a horse made ready to ride, or a dog who’s learnt to beg. He’s had a taste, and as much as he knows intimately what it will be like, it won’t stop his body from yielding again when the time comes, it won’t stop it from being overwhelming.

“Thank you,” he croaks.

“Do not thank me for this. This should never have happened.”

“Thank you for taking the pain away.” He crawls to the side of the room and uses the wall to prop himself up. “So, that’s that, huh?”

Castiel stands, motionless, like nothing had ever happened at all. He turns and Bucky makes a sound of distress. 

“Don’t leave, please don't leave.”

“You want me to stay, even after…?”

“I don’t want to be alone. Not now, not when… will you stay with me?”

“I cannot stay forever.”

“Just for now then, just tonight. I want to sleep, will you — so I’m not alone, will you stay?”

The man who’s not a man nods once, and moves to look up and out through the high bars of the window. Bucky sighs, trying to calm his racing heart. He shakes and he doesn’t know if it’s cold, or fear. He wishes he had clothes, or a blanket. He falls asleep to the sound of a low humming note resonating from Castiel, a continuous monotonous sound that vibrates through his ear drums and into his core. It soothes, it sounds like the churning of an engine to his ears, or a deep bass note at the start of a song if he could only remember the tune.

* * *

When the Russians come for him, and take him, it’s worse but it’s not new. At first it’s much like it was with Castiel, a rushed but painful experience. One or two at a time come and pin him against the floor or fuck him while he’s strapped to the table — and he doesn’t know why he ever expected it to play out differently, of course they would take the opportunity when he’s already weak and hurting. He screams then too and they seem to like it.

And then comes a day where they decided everyone should get a turn, all at once, one after the other. He’s strung up by the neck and his one arm and they take turns pounding into him from behind. His cell door is left open and a steady stream of men visit him all day. It becomes too much very quickly, and he feels like he’s shattering. Castiel appears as he cries out and he stands motionless within Bucky’s line of sight. Bucky looks at him for as long as he can keep his head up and his eyes open.

When he starts to fail, choking as the weight of his body pulls him down, they unchain him and let him flop on the floor. He cries out again, because he can’t see the angel anymore. There’s still more men who want a taste of him, and he yells for Castiel. Yells until he can’t even speak the name, as he’s fucked over and over. Until he can only make a syllable.

_ Cas, Cas, Cas. _

His arm is outstretched and his fingers spasm as his body rocks. He feels a hand enclose his, twisting fingers through his own. He twitches his neck and looks up through sweaty strands of hair and sees the angel crouching over him, Castiel’s fingers entwined with his.

_ Thank you, _ he thinks.  _ Don’t leave me. _

When the day is finally over Castiel touches his forehead and he sinks into sleep. Waking, he finds a feather in his curled fist and he clings to it. It’s not the same as Castiel’s healing touch, but it still means something so he keeps, hidden behind a loose stone and taken out to look at when he’s sure he won’t be found with it.

He keeps it until he can’t remember it’s significance, only that it’s his.

* * *

He doesn’t see the angel very many times after that. He thinks it’s probably because he’s cursed now. Unholy. An abomination. 

With every new day they twist him further, chip away at him piece by piece. He remembers there was kindness once, but he has to leave the memory of it behind eventually, when the thought of it burns him. 

The feather, though, he keeps. He tucks it into his uniform when they clad him in armour. It’s always close, even when he doesn’t remember why he has it. It’s his only possession and for that reason alone, it’s precious.

* * *

There’s a new cell, later. A brighter one, one of many. He has been so many places, and all of them look the same in the right light, from the right angle. There are always bars or locked doors and guards that say  _ no  _ or  _ stay _ or  _ comply _ .

A strange fluttering sound makes him open his eyes from the calm meditative state he tries to enter when he’s alone.

There’s a man in a trench coat with dark hair standing inside his cell, though he’s sure the door didn’t open. He doesn’t recognise the man. He stands ready to fight, his metal arm heavy and strong, his muscles primed to overpower. Unless the man tells him to stand down, he has to protect himself.

“James?” the man asks.

He flicks through various responses and discards them all.

“Bucky, can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” he answers, in Russian. The man’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Do you remember me?”

“No.” he never remembers anyone who isn’t his handler.

“Bucky… I’m sorry.”

“Who is Bucky?”

Footsteps echo outside his room and he drops his arms to his sides.

“Ready, Soldat?”

“Ready to comply,” he says, standing to attention in front of the door.

As the door opens, he sees the man fade into the background out of his peripheral vision. The guards snap cuffs around his wrists and throw a bag over his head and he doesn't resist. He hears the rustling of wind and when he’s back in his cell later, waiting for whatever command comes next, there’s no one else there.

There is a feather drawn in the dust on the floor and he pulls out the one he keeps hidden to compare them. They look the same and he doesn’t know what it means, but he likes it. He still scuffs a boot through the drawn image before anyone else can see it, but he names the feather  _ Bucky _ and tucks it back inside his clothing — he doesn’t know why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To skip the HTP portions, stop reading at the line: "When the Russians come for him" and you can resume again after the next paragraph break. Bucky is hurt by lots of people, Cas offers what comfort he can by standing witness, holding Bucky's hand, and leaves him with a feather when the day is over. This is the part where Bucky first thinks of him as Cas, not Castiel.
> 
> Subsequent chapters to follow soon, as it's all written already! Comments and kudos always appreciated, no matter when you read this <3
> 
> (N.B I haven't been able to watch superhero or action films in a while as they have too many things in that trigger panic attacks, so it's been a long time since I saw any Marvel canon material, any inconsistencies in character can be put down to that.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no Hydra Trash Party elements in this particular chapter, no characters are involved that aren't Bucky or Cas. So it's just a little torture between friends...

The Asset has been awake for around thirty hours, and up and on his feet for most of them. The mission was long and tedious, but he pleased the handlers and got a grunted nod of acknowledgement at the safe house.

But then… then he was thrust out into the cold Detroit wind and told to find his own way back to base. For security reasons, he thinks, so they shouldn’t all travel together. Although he can’t rule out that it’s just cruelty, or another test, or another reason to punish him if he gets back late.

It’s daylight now, although not for much longer, so his tactical gear is hidden behind a plain clothes coat, and a scarf to hide the mask. He peers out through slitted eyes and tries to walk with a little less purpose than usual. They’ve told him many times that he’s too obvious amongst civilians, too quick, too sure on his feet; he has to blend in. They could be watching his progress to see how he does — everything is always an opportunity to hone him into a better weapon, to mould him into a sharper tool. And if he fails to comply… if he fails, it’s not worth thinking about. He knows pain, he knows retraining, he knows the chair. He doesn’t remember exactly what any of it entails, only that he should avoid it at all costs; his body remembers the sense of them even if he’s fuzzy on the details.

The map of Detroit is locked in his mind, his only focus right now. He turns, and slips down a side street to cut across to a parking lot where he might be able to jump start a car. The side street leads on to an alley and he hauls over a chain link fence and lands heavily on the other side.

Pigeons flutter and he looks overhead for their location, sure he should be able to see them, they sounded so close. 

He’s constantly aware of his surroundings, trained and tuned to it, ready to sprint, or fight, or drop and hide at a milliseconds notice. Which is why it’s such a surprise when footsteps sound behind him. He whirls, dropping his backpack and shifting his feet. There was no one in the alley, he knows that like he knows his current objective. There was no one there when he entered, he couldn’t hear or smell anything, couldn’t sense anyone nearby.

So where did this man come from?

He has a long beige trench coat and messy dark hair and he’s clearly got a weapon concealed in his right hand. He could just be a local gang member, no one to bother with. The asset picks up his dropped bag, and shrugs it on his shoulder.

“Didn’t see you there,” he grunts, and moves to circle the man, pointing out the end of the alley he wants to walk towards, hoping he’ll just be let aside and allowed to pass. He doesn’t want to make a scene, he was told to make it quietly back to Hydra’s base, no trouble, no fuss.

The man nods, tersely and they step around each other.

“Do I know you,” the man asks suddenly, eyes narrowed. 

The Asset’s heart does three fast thud-thud-thuds in his chest before he regains control of his reaction. He shakes his head.

“Wait, I do, we’ve met before.” The man puts a hand on his arm and the Asset flings it off.

“No. We haven’t.” Though of course, he can’t say for certain that that’s true. His blank memory bothers him rarely, how can you miss something you don’t remember? But it does cause problems, when he’s expected to know something he doesn’t.

The man grabs his shoulder, getting a fistful of coat and bag and the Asset rips free, turns on his heel, and shoves the man backwards. The man barely moves, doesn’t hardly even waver and he was hit with the metal arm. The Asset tilts his head, cocking it with a question. Curiosity flares through his skull, a million questions he can’t quite put voice to. The man raises his arm and the Soldier flinches.

“Who are you?” the man asks.

“Who are you?” the soldier replies.

“Don’t play that game, answer me.”

The Asset isn’t playing, but he rips himself away and free, and spins to run. He’s tackled from behind and he tucks his knees and prepares to roll away on impact but the weight behind him is so strong, so much heavier than expected and he ends up sprawled on his stomach. He throws an elbow blindly behind, following the jab with a slash outward from the shoulder and the man backs off enough that he can twist onto his back. He punches up with his left hand, hitting the solid flesh of the man who staggers slightly, though it looks more in surprise than pain. He digs his heels in ready to flip back onto his feet but the man straddles him and holds him down.

He bashes with one arm aiming for the man’s head, and then the other, and the man blocks both, and in one silver flash holds some kind of blade to his throat. The Asset goes still, panting hard, waiting for an order. Waiting for the words that will make him stand down. If this is a test he wants to pass, if this is a beat down he wants to know so he’ll stop making it worse. He waits and when nothing comes he cringes, drawing back into himself. His eyes half close and he pulls his shoulders up near his ears.

Then man grabs for the scarf and pulls it free and huffs in annoyance when confronted with the mask. He fumbles behind the Soldier’s head for the straps and when he can’t find them he orders: “Take it off.”

He shakes his head. The blade digs in a little deeper to the flesh below the mask.

“Now. I don’t want to hurt you.”

The Asset has heard that before and he doesn’t believe it. He slowly lifts his flesh arm and unclips the buckles at the base of his skull, and the one higher up and holds the mask steady. When it’s done, he pauses, looks the man over and screws up his face. He’s not supposed to be seen on missions, or… well, ever, really. He’s going to be hurt, badly, for this.

“You should let me go,” he says instead of anything else, because begging is not allowed. He knows his words are always quiet behind the muzzle-like mask, but he doesn’t speak up, he makes the man lean closer to hear him.

“Are you…” the man looks startled, touches the mask, and pulls. The gasp that follows as it reveals his face makes the Asset recoil. “James?”

He shakes his head. No. That’s not his name. He doesn’t have a name. 

“James Buchanan Barnes?”

“No,” he growls.

“You are, I…” the man looks like he’s been gutted, a look the Asset knows all too well, but he hasn’t stabbed the man. “Bucky, that’s who you are.”

The Asset takes initiative and throws him off, and the man goes like a heavy sack, landing sprawled on his back. The Asset gets carefully to his feet, drawing up to his full height and stalks towards him.

“It’s me, Castiel! Don’t you remember? Cas, you called me once.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know you.”

“I can see that,” the man, Castiel, says sadly. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you a handler?” he asks.

“No. No I’m not.” Castiel moves as though he might get up and the Asset rushes forward.

“Good,” he says, before he brings his metal fist down on the man’s temple. 

Castiel takes two hits before he slumps unconscious. The Asset stands over him as it begins to rain, and tries to decide what he should do next.

* * *

He found an abandoned warehouse two streets over, and it wasn’t difficult to carry the unconscious man there. He has Castiel laid out on his stomach, left where he was dropped, and paces back and forth in indecision.

The sight of the man asleep on cold concrete is unnerving. He shivers, and puts his mask back in place. This isn’t about him, he’s the Asset right now, not a troublemaker who is facing retribution; if he plays this right it won’t come back to haunt him at all.

He could leave and let the man wake up alone. He could report his encounter right away, and call for backup. He could extract information and decide what to do next. He could kill this man and have it be over.

He does none of those things. He feels frozen, like he’s seeing something he’s not supposed to. Some gut instinct warns him there is power here, and maybe it was the man not faltering under his blows as easily as he expected, but he feels like it’s something more indefinable. 

He shakes his head, he must be defective, or needing a wipe more urgently than his commanders realised. Shame crawls up his throat and burns his skin red, he shouldn’t be making decisions, that’s not his primary function.

He pushes the thought aside and tries to think what his handlers would do to him if he came back _wrong_ after a mission. Recognising the first steps is easy.

He strips the man of his coat and shoes, and checks for weapons. One long silver blade that he’s never seen the like of before. He tucks it into a strap at his back, safe and secure.

Then he pulls both of Castiel’s arms above his head and holds them tightly with the metal hand. He slaps the man repeatedly around the face, wincing slightly with each blow, until he begins to stir. He squeezes the wrists he holds once in warning and places his other hand around Castiel’s throat.

“Bucky?”

“No.”

“I know you, you won’t hurt me. You cannot hurt me.”

The Asset constricts the hand around Castiel’s throat in reply. Castiel goes red, splutters a little, but seems no worse for wear when he releases the press on the windpipe. The Soldier is impressed, and curious, and tilts his head.

“Mission?” he grunts. Castiel only scowls at him. “Mission!” he repeats, and slams Castiel’s forearms against the solid floor.

“I have none.”

“Objective?”

“Currently? To help you.”

He frowns, confused. He doesn’t need help, does he? 

“I can assist you,” Castiel says. “Get you out of here.”

That stings, that’s… that’s not possible. He is _owned._ Property. Equipment. An _asset._ He doesn’t have a life besides his brief usefulness on missions, there is nothing to leave for, and nowhere to go. He is… nothing.

“Who do you report to?” 

“Only myself.”

“ _Liar!”_

He cuts off Castiel’s air again until he begins to thrash, kicking blindly. He knows how to avoid the flailing legs and holds Castiel down. After two minutes pass he lets up and Castiel coughs. He slaps Castiel’s face again, one on each side as he pants for a calm breath.

“I do not lie, and you cannot hurt me.”

He moves fast, before there’s time to think; grips the front of Castiel’s shirt and keeps firm hold on his arms and hauls him upright. The surprise of the sudden motion means there isn’t time for Castiel to lash out, or gain his footing, before the Asset slams his back against the nearest wooden beam.

Castiel sways, and slumps and the Asset follows him down to the floor. He straddles Castiel, keeping his arms pinned above his head.

“Bucky, you can stop this.”

“Why did you cross paths with me?” he asks — demands, really.

“I recognised you, that’s all, it wasn’t planned.”

Which is probably, or at least possibly, true. “I don’t know you,” he says.

“I can see that, but I know you; we have met before.”

“What do you want with me? Who wants to eliminate me?”

“Eliminate? No one!”

Which means Castiel must be tasked with capturing the Winter Soldier, he thinks. “I won’t go with you.”

“Why not? I could help you.”

“Help what?”

“Regain your memories, who you are. Get you out of this life.”

“I have no memories,” he spits. It must be a lie, or a ruse. He was warned other organisations may want him; want to study him, or use him, or replicate him. He shudders. The doctors are the worst part, always prodding, poking, sticking needles in him and operating the chair.

“You do.” Another lie.

“You will tell me what I want to know!” he shouts. It’s a hard thing, to shout, it pings too many ingrained responses in his mind and he flinches. He recoils. He lets Castiel’s arms drop and sits back, head bowed. And then remembers he’s supposed to be the one in charge here, he’s running this interrogation. It’s all backwards, all upside down.

He’s still gripping Castiel’s wrists with his metal arm and he clenches around them. The man winces. He expects Castiel to look stony faced, impassive. He traces the lines of Castiel’s face with his flesh index finger — around the eye socket and down the cheekbone to the sculpted chin. Castiel doesn’t move, or look scared. The Asset squeezes with his metal fingers again and Castiel flicks his gaze to where their arms are joined.

“You have a new arm.”

He scowls, he’s always had this arm, ever since… always. He continues his exploration, wondering where Castiel’s strength comes from, and if it’s anything like his own. His fingers find Castiel’s his shirt collar and push it aside, roving over the other man’s chest and shoulder.

“Bucky…?”

He flicks his eyes up to Castiel’s and the other goes silent, tipping his head to the side like he’s assessing the situation.

He whips a knife from his boot and holds it to Castiel’s cheek. “Can this hurt you?”

“No.”

He slices down Castiel’s face and watches with scrutiny as the cut heals before the blood can drip further than a finger width. His slides the knife away and slams Castiel’s arms back above his head.

“I won’t fight you,” Castiel says, though he does struggle a little. But he settles, once he seems… comfortable. “I have no desire to hurt you. Not… not again.”

The Asset grunts, he’s unconvinced. Life is pain, pain is part of life, his life is full of it. He causes it, he feels it, he is controlled by it. 

He feels the weight of the blade Castiel carried, snug against his back; he pulls it free slowly, carefully, and twirls it between his fingers. Castiel’s eyes follow the movement.

“This will hurt you?” he asks.

“...yes.”

He holds it against Castiel’s neck and breathes, slowing his heart rate. “What will you tell me?”

“Whatever you want to know, I won’t lie to you. I said it once, I’ll say it again.”

“Allegiance?”

“Myself.”

“Partners?”

“Two, just men. Trying to do good. They taught _me_ how to do good. Which is more than I knew last we met.”

The Asset mills that over, slipping the blade back and forth along Castiel’s skin. He nicks the blade into the soft flesh of Castiel’s jaw and Castiel flinches. The cut doesn’t heal.

“How do you know me?”

“I… I watched over you, once.”

“When?”

“The nineteen forties, I believe it was.”

“Lies.” He cuts again, down Castiel’s throat, just to the left of the carotid artery. It induces a hiss of inhaled air and Castiel tenses under him.

“I will. Not. Lie. Not to you.”

“Explain, then.” he pushes a stray strand of hair off Castiel’s forehead with the tip of the knife, and then lets it come to rest hovering in front of Castiel’s eye.

Castiel squirms, and he tightens his hold on the man’s wrists; the fingers are going purple, and he wonders if he should let up. No one lets up on him when they want information, or his attention, and he doesn’t know if he should keep to the same boundaries — which is to say, is anything off limits?

“I did not look like this, when I knew you before, when you still knew your real name. I… inhabited a different body.”

His breath quickens at the mention of a different body. A different life? Another story? He looks down at himself and sees the bulk and might of his body and wonders if it could have ever looked different. He’s glad he’s wearing the mask, he can be the Soldier with it on, and not give away that he’s floundering.

“Why the muzzle, Bucky? Why are they making you wear it?” Castiel asks, looking at him with narrowed, concerned eyes.

“Armor.”

“Is it? Or is it anonymity? I wanted to be invisible once, to do my job. My job was to watch — observe and report back. I could blend into the background and choose not to be seen. Does that sound familiar?”

It does, it’s his whole existence and he doesn’t like being reminded of it, or of someone knowing so much about him when he’s supposed to keep himself off every radar. He punches Castiel in the face with the hand holding the blade, never letting Castiel’s arms slip from his metal hand.

“Be concise,” he spits, feeling the hot spray hit the inside of his mask.

Why? What do you fear from listening to me? Does it spark something, do you start to remember?”

“I won’t listen to you try and deceive me, your tricks aren’t worth anything here.”

“I’m not trying to trick you, I want to—”

“What you want isn’t important, what matters is you doing as I say.” he says it with all the measured patience he can muster, draws from years of interrogations where his cold, calm demeanour set his targets on edge.

It doesn’t work. Castiel glares and pushes back. “If you won’t take my help, then you can let me go!” 

He pushes harder, trying to to twist free, and the Asset grunts and shoves him back down. He slashes the blade across Castiel’s stomach, a shallow but long cut, and then across each upper arm. Castiel cries out and arches his back, and then scrunches up his face. A smell not unlike the air before a storm tingles through the Assets senses and it sets his nerves on edge.

He cuts again, and again; across Castiel’s face, arms and hands and neck, down his torso and two deeper ones across his upper thighs — which makes Castiel scream. He drags Castiel down until he’s on his back on the floor, puts a boot on his chest and holds the blade like he might drop it directly on to Castiel’s throat.

Castiel’s white shirt slowly blooms red, and the slashed fabric clings to blood-wet skin. 

“Be still, you are a prisoner.”

Castiel nods, teeth clenched. “You are so much stronger than I remember.”

“Continue speaking,” he says, and presses his boot more firmly.

Castiel gasps, and his eyes close briefly. “I was assigned to monitor your timeline, passively and without interference. And I did, at first. But you were suffering, and I… I couldn’t bear it.”

“Why? How?”

“I don’t know the reason,” Castiel looks away. “I was never told.”

The Asset’s shoulders tighten, muscles drawn tight like a bow-string. That, at least, he understands.

“I’m an angel, that’s how I knew you so long ago, and am still alive now. A different vessel, but the same being.”

He steps back in surprise and Castiel rolls onto his side, presses his hands to his bleeding legs and looks up, waiting for a reaction. He feels static in his head, building and building. Nothing makes sense. He’s supposed to be doing one thing and here he is waylaid by a situation he cannot understand, or accept. It doesn’t _fit._ Angels cannot be real, there is too much bad too much terror, for anything divine to exist.

He charges in, and lands several heavy blows on Castiel’s head and face before using the blade to cut his shirt clean off. The trousers and underwear come next and he takes no care in avoiding cutting skin, too. Castiel yells, and thrashes, but the Asset is stronger — at least right now. 

When the man is nude the Asset surveys him, hands holding him still and shoved hard against the floor. Scraps of clothes litter the ground and blood speckles all around them, and is smeared across both the Assets body armor and Castiel’s naked skin. Castiel pants fiercely, but makes no move to counter attack.

The Asset touches and prods and pokes every inch of him; lifts the chiselled face and forces the mouth open to look and fumble inside it with his real hand. He scrapes the blade through the hair in the scalp looking for… looking for something he can’t put into thought. An edge, or a slip, or a trick; something to confirm or deny what Castiel says.

He shifts Castiel around like a rag doll, tossing his limbs where he sees fit and punching the man in the abdomen if he tries to move them. He pokes the tender underarm area, and the back of the knees, and then the groin.

“I won’t,” Castiel huffs as the Asset tugs on his balls, moves them side to side, and then trails his fingers across his perineum. “I won’t fight you. Whatever you want to do, I deserve it.”

The Asset stills, and then _shoves_ his metal fingers inside the furled muscles that surround the man’s hole. He pushes in, further and further, and wiggles them around. Castiel screeches and then goes very still, arms and legs splayed and heavy on the ground. He has the blade held in his fist perpendicular to Castiel’s stomach, and likes the feel of the unyielding metal beside skin that flexes in and out with every breath.

“Bucky, what do you want me to do? What are you looking for?” Castiel asks with his voice strained. 

He pulls his fingers free and grips Castiel’s thigh harshly, metal bruising flesh so quickly and completely that Castiel convulses.

“You are not what you say you are, there’s no proof.”

“You didn’t need proof before.”

Castiel moves in one sudden motion, and rips his mask free. The Asset scowls, and falls backward, covering his face with his arm. 

“Let me look at you,” Castiel says, and his eyes glow.

He lowers his limb in alarm. He wants to scurry away from that sight, from the white-blue glow; it looks so menacing, and inhuman. 

“There you are,” Castiel smiles and his eyelids flutter. “Can I touch you?”

He shakes his head. Castiel nods, like he accepts it, is resigned to it. “Then I won’t, not until you ask.”

“But, I will touch _you_ ,” he says, and pounces forward until he has Castiel beneath him again. He straddles Castiel and grasps his face solidly. “I have orders to follow. You will come with me until… until then.” 

“I could make you leave, you know. Force your healing upon you.” Castiel says.

“You would have to touch me, maybe hurt me.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Then you won’t fight?”

“I suppose I won’t.”

He pulls straps and buckles from his body armor, yanking bits of Velcro and neoprene free until he has enough to bind Castiel hand and foot. Castiel doesn’t resist and it alarms him. Who would let themselves get captured? He pulls two dozen nails from the floorboards with the ease of his serum-induced strength and drives them through the plastic straps so Castiel is impaled by his bonds to the floor.

“Stay?” he asks, hesitant.

Castiel nods.

He leaves, finds a car and drives it back to the warehouse. Castiel is naked and bloody where he left him, and it’s easy to bundle him into the trunk and drive away.

* * *

It’s a thirteen hour drive from Detroit to his rendezvous point, to the Hydra base he has to reach. Four hours in he has to pull over and sleep at the side of the road. He can go for days longer usually but the strain of this newest encounter makes him need to reset his mind.

He sleeps in the driver’s seat, with the window cracked for fresh air. Castiel doesn’t make a sound from the trunk of the car. It’s difficult to drive toward his destination when he isn’t sure what his goal is; is he returning with a prisoner? Or is he just giving himself distance between whatever Castiel and his people want, before he sets the man — angel — free?

In the end, he makes a decision without knowing he’s making it. He pulls up to an abandoned house and hauls his acquisition inside, down narrow steps and into the basement. Castiel doesn’t fight, but does try to talk to him, and only stops when the Asset puts the strange blade into his mouth and presses on his tongue.

“Quiet, no speaking.”

He settles the man into the dark of the basement and wraps a cloth around his eyes. “Stay, I’ll be back. I’ll bring food and water.”

“I require neither.”

“You said no lying,” he growls, shoving Castiel until his head cracks against the wall.

“And I am not.”

He can’t believe that’s true.

* * *

He writes himself a note with the address and the reason for going there on several small pieces of paper that he hides in various places in his armor and around the compound. It’s a risk, and a big one. He can’t be found keeping a secret, and there’s also the possibility that he may forget to check his hiding spots after a memory wipe and never go back to Castiel.

But he does remember. And he comes back. Leaves again. Another wipe. Comes back. He visits at every chance he gets, always surprised to find Castiel has escaped his bonds and yet remains where he is left.

“I want to help you, if you’ll let me,” Cas says in answer to the questions about why he doesn’t escape. He always ties Cas up again, and sometimes gags him, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The man is always there. Once he even left the door unlocked and a car on the driveway, just to see what would happen, and still Castiel remained.

Their time together is confusing, the Asset asks questions that he doesn’t understand the answers to, trying to piece together the story of a man named James Barnes with the blanks in his own life. They never seem to fit side by side. 

“You don’t really remember, you only remember me telling you,” Castiel sighs one day. “It’s not the same thing.”

“There is nothing to remember, I am a soldier, nothing more.”

“That is simply not true, if it were you wouldn’t be breaking orders and deceiving your superiors right now.”

The Asset hurts Castiel for that remark; but he hurts the angel with weapons and fists he knows won’t leave permanent injuries. He saves the angel blade for special occasions, on a shelf beside the basement stairs.

* * *

He asks Castiel to leave the blindfold on, unable to stand the way he is looked at with sad eyes and scrutiny; the way Castiel scrunches up his nose with distaste when he says something Castiel doesn’t agree with, or when he grows tired and defers to Castiel for orders.

Surprisingly, Castiel agrees. He doesn’t know if Cas leaves the blindfold in place when he is away on missions, or if he only ties it back over his eyes when he hears the Asset returning, but it’s always snug on Castiel’s face when he tramps down the stairs.

* * *

He sits beside Castiel shoulder to shoulder — the naked man bound with scratchy bits of rope and rusty chain — and contemplates the things he knows. 

One; this man has knowledge about himself that he doesn’t. Two; Cas has healing abilities that rival his own. Three; Castiel has refused to hurt him, choosing to stay captive rather than fight the Asset and get away, not even abandoning the Asset to the shock of finding an empty cellar. Four; he has a feather, has had it for as long as he remembers, and the man says he’s an angel.

He plays with the feather, balances it on his fingers and pinches it between thumb and forefinger to sweep through the air. 

“Angels have wings,” he says, and feels Cas stiffen.

“Yes.”

“ _You_ don’t _.”_

“I do, you just cannot see them. They are not on the earthly plane. In the same way you cannot see my true form, it’s difficult for a human to comprehend and stay sane and whole.”

“True form, is that a code name?”

Cas sighs. “No, it’s not a code name. Not everything is a war game, Bucky.”

Sometimes he wishes he could see Castiel’s expressions, even though he knows it’s safer to keep a captive off their guard and hindered, like he is when he’s blindfolded. He leans over and trails the feather down the exposed part of Cas’s cheek, and brushes it across the man’s lips, like a kiss.

“What is that… is that what I think it is? You still have it?”

“A feather.”

“ _My_ feather?” Castiel breathes hard beside him, and tries to reach for the blindfold, hindered by his tied wrists. He makes a strangled frustrated noise and clenches his teeth. “You kept it?”

The Asset pulls the blindfold free, gently. “Yours?” he waves the feather in front of Cas’s face, who follows the movement with watering eyes. “No, _mine._ ”

“I gave it to you!”

“Did you? I don’t remember.” 

“But you kept it, it must mean something to you.”

“What would it mean?”

“That you knew I — or someone, if you could not recall me — cared about what happened to you, that you were not alone.”

He shrugs, “I've always had it. It’s part of me.” Something niggles at his subconscious. “I… it had a name.”

Cas looks at him eagerly, leans forward and nods.

“Buck. It’s a… buck? Buck...y?”

“You named it Bucky, my feather? No, that’s… that’s your name.”

He shrugs again. “I still don’t see how it’s yours.”

Castiel licks his lips, and sighs. He can twist in his bonds, just a little, and reaches behind himself. With a wince a shadow flares up behind him, a flash of stark shapes blackens the wall for a fleeting moment and then a small sound like a miniature thunderclap shakes the room. Cas brings his hands forward again, and in them, cradled like a precious thing, is a black feather with a white tip.

It would match the one in The Assets hand except for the fact that it’s half bare and looks like it’s been scorched. But the shape, the size, even the colour… they’re the same. His mind brings up an image of a feather drawn in dust, and of a hand gripping one in a closed fist, while someone’s body — not his, surely not his? — heals agonisingly slowly from some brutal treatment or other.

He looks between the two and then grabs for the one in Cas’s hands. It baffles him, and worries him because he can’t understand. And if he can’t understand he can’t pretend, and if he can’t pretend they might be found out; if he’s found out then this one small thing that’s _his_ , that’s more pleasant than anything else he experiences, will be taken away.

“Again. Show me.”

“No, I don’t think—”

He shoves a hand over Cas’ mouth and snarls, “ _Again.”_

Cas shakes his head and it’s only when the Asset goes and retrieves the long silver blade from upstairs that Castiel aquiseses. With the tip of the blade pressing to the hollow of his throat he retrieves feather after feather, until they start coming away with red tips and Castiel can’t hold back cries of pain at each retrieval.

“Please,” he gasps.

“It hurts?”

“Yes.”

The Asset rolls him onto his stomach and examines the man’s back, it looks unmarred, unmarked, clear of wounds. Cas slumps, laying heavily on his bound hands and the Asset prods and probes his back, drags his fingernails across the unblemished skin and watches it heal. He looks at the singed, blood stained feathers and feels a niggling pit of _wrong_ waken in his stomach.

“I don’t see them,” he says defiantly instead of giving in to the guilty gnawing sensation in his gut. “Where do they come from?”

“Within, it’s an innate power.” Cas rolls his head sideways and looks tiredly at him. “I think I am spent for the day.” When the Asset says nothing he tries again. “I’m tired, and hurt, and need to rest.”

The guilt increases and he wants to smother it, to make it stop. If he goes back to Hydra like this, they’ll know something is wrong. He grabs the angel blade, and when Cas grunts and tries to roll away he plants a firm hand on the back of Cas’s neck. The blade sinks in slowly, deeper and deeper, a clean cut that carves into muscle. He swipes it sideways and the curve of red that follows in its wake as the skin splits open is quick to well up and spill down onto the floor.

Cas screams, and thrashes. He pins the angel harder, and slices again. He digs into Castiel’s back, first with the knife and then pries the cuts apart with his metal fingers before plunging his flesh hand into the wound and searching around for something that doesn’t feel human. He knows what the insides of a person look and feel like, and he looks for anything that doesn’t fit. He looks for bone or sinew that don’t belong.

He finds nothing and it drives him into a fervour. He picks at the edges of the wounds he's made and peels the skin back and away. The cuts and slices are good starting points but he wants to look further, see more, check what's underneath. 

Cas writhes and whimpers below him, screams and begs and before he knows what he’s doing he rearranges the limbs and pushes the man’s own fist into his mouth to shut him up.

Cas's cries are louder at his skin being methodically spliced away than they were when the blade dug deeper. He wonders if that's because he's closer to finding something, or if it's just because the pain spreads -- burning along nerve endings instead of the clean, deeper cuts. He knows that. How does he know that? Has he experienced that too?

By the time he’s done Castiel’s back is an ugly mess of open cuts and bloodied skin and his own hands are coated too. He’s wavering on the edge of blind panic, he didn’t find what he was looking for, he failed. He didn’t get the intel. He has ruined the operation. He’s screwed up. The blood turns his stomach, and he wants to vomit, but that would waste precious nutrients.

“Why? Bucky, why?” Castiel’s fist is spit wet and has bruises from his own teeth.

He picks up the feathers that are scattered about on the floor and places them in a line by the wall.

“M’sorry. Sir. Sorry sir.” his head feels like it’s on fire. Images flash in front of his eyes, his own body strapped to a table as he looks down at it as surgeons cut into him. His arm, missing, socket mutilated. He clenches his fist. “Reporting for clean up. Ready to comply.”

He walks blindly out of the building, and takes to his motorcycle, and only vaguely hears the calls for his return until the engine drowns them out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that painful enough? Let me know in the comments ;)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End notes for instrucrions and brief summary of where to skip to avoid the worst of the Hydra Trash Party Elements

He is wiped. Again. Beaten, again. Put into cryo by people with disgusted looks and mutterings about how useless he is. When he wakes he feels clearer. He finds the note he left for himself with instructions and follows them to the letter, until he finds Castiel curled up on the floor of a dirty, blood soaked basement.

“You came back." Castiel's voice is hoarse.

He rocks in place. “Status?”

“I’m here, Bucky. Going to be here until you help me now, I think.”

“You haven’t undone your bonds.”

“I’m weak.” Castiel turns, and his ruined back is still slowly weeping blood.

“I’ll help. Bring… food, sustenance. Medicine.” he turns to go and Cas groans.

“Those things won’t help me.”

He falters. “Status?”

“I need my friends.”

“Cannot comply. Unknown entity.”

“Bucky, come back, come back to me. Let me heal you.”

He walks over kneels next to the injured angel, and bows his head. “Sorry, don’t know… never know… s’all wrong, isn’t it?”

“It’s alright, you’re not yourself. Here.” Cas reaches two fingers up to his forehead and presses them hard against his temple.

It burns, a cold burn like ice but it sears nonetheless. He grits his teeth and bears it and then it’s gone and Castiel is ashen faced beside him when he opens his eyes. “I’m… I’m too weak.” The man looks panicked and he’s unsure what to do. 

There isn’t anything to do but follow procedure now, he knows this, and that’s easy — he can do that. Prisoners should be weak, but it makes him sad that this one is. He sighs. “Quiet. I’ll stay with you until they come.”

“Until who comes? Who knows I’m here?”

He backhands the man, whoever he is, and ties a nearby cloth so it covers his lips and eyes. “No resisting.”

A muffled plea escapes the man but the Asset sets about finding something to stem the bleeding, and doesn’t pay him any mind.

* * *

Things are… confusing. He feels on edge and stressed, adrenaline pumps through his veins whenever he’s not busy, he can’t find that state of calm that usually fills his head. Something is wrong. He frets over it, and soothes himself by holding the prisoner close; safe and secure, he must keep them safe.

Castiel is naked but that’s not unusual; he’s been naked plenty of times himself. He moves his hands all over Castiel’s body, checks him for weak points and wounds, anything that might give him clues. But then no — it’s a shake down, he thinks, make sure the prisoner isn’t hiding anything. Castiel protests weakly, tries to shake his hands off and he presses harder in warning; be still, and it doesn’t have to bruise.

He works his way down until he detachedly surveys Castiel’s cock and balls, examines them for injury and cleanliness. Feels the weight of them in his hand, cups Cas’s balls and wonders if he should be emptying them, like his handlers do to him sometimes. Control, it’s all about control; keep them sedate, keep them weak. He squeezes just to see what happens.

“Bucky!”

“Quiet, or I’ll gag you again.” 

“Please,” it comes out small and quiet. “What do you want? What can I do?”

He pushes Cas away from him, breaks the contact and drags down the fabric that has covered his eyes for a week so that it covers his mouth, too. Castiel sighs. It’s not thorough, not by any means, but it seems to get the point across that he should stay silent. He’s been bleeding for days, slow and sluggish, and sometimes a faint light glows from the wounds. The Asset changes the bandages and tries not to worry about how limp Castiel goes when he tends to the wounds.

Maybe he should get his prisoner medical help? Maybe he should ask what can heal the injuries caused by Castiel’s blade? When he’s done he checks the bindings on his hands and feet — both strapped tight, his arms bound to his sides and his legs pressed so close together his ankles must hurt. He wraps another length of cord around Castiel’s throat and threads it to his knees; it makes him bend at the waist to accommodate the restraint.

He can’t be too careful, or… or something will go wrong.

* * *

“Bucky.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Soldier?”

“Sir?”

“Can you untie me?”

“Negative. Unsafe.” He thinks they have this conversation every time he’s here, but he can’t be sure.

“I thought you were trusting me? I was here to help you.”

“Help doesn’t come,” he whispers, and that makes Castiel pause, like maybe he’s deviated from the script. “I can only watch.”

“Did I teach you that?” Castiel asks, and he sounds sad. It’s hard to tell, he hasn’t been able to see Castiel’s face since he covered it, hasn’t let the angel see in case he sees something the Asset is supposed to hide.

“I follow my training to the letter, I follow orders. You are not a handler?”

“No, and I’m not your saviour either, apparently. I can’t help you, or me, not like this. I need my friends. I… I’m trapped.” Cas begins to struggle and the Asset holds him firmly while he wears himself out; it takes less and less time every visit.

He wonders how long Castiel struggles when he’s not here, whether he thrashes and whines softly for hours, all alone. It’s a worrying thought, and he adds some extra precautions to the set up of ropes and chains before he leaves.

* * *

He’s in with the doctor and he’s nervous; a fine sheen of sweat covers him and it reminds him of the shine of pain-soaked skin that Castiel wore the last time he was there. He knows his memory of the last few days is fractured, and he knows he’s keeping something from Hydra that he shouldn’t, but between blinks he’s not sure what it is, or why.

“His heart rate is elevated.”

“Is he ill?”

“He doesn’t get ill, that the whole point of him.”

“So he’s malfunctioning?”

“Soldier, status report.”

He rattles off his usual words, eyes fixed straight ahead. Pierce lingers close by, keeping fingers on his pulse. Hands grip his hair and tilt his head back.

“You’re lying.”

He breathes through his nose and shakes his head.

“What’s wrong, then?”

“Prisoner transfer didn’t happen,” he blurts out.

Pierce backs off and everyone in the room goes still. “What?”

“Didn’t happen,” he says again, and clenches his jaw. “Secure, but not within the compound.”

“Who’s the prisoner?” Pierce asks, like they’re just having a conversation.

“Unclear. Threat neutralised.”

“Soldier,” he snaps his eyes to his handler, as Rumlow enters the room. “Who’s the prisoner, is it you?”

“Ready to comply,” he says. “Ready to… comply?” He thinks he might have just blown everything. He thinks he might be leaving Castiel to fend for himself. He thinks, if that happens, he might lose his only friend. He’s not supposed to have friends, though, so maybe that’s a good thing.

“Stick him in the tank, he needs a full reset.” Pierce says, pinching his nose.

“Monitor him closely, and do the usual run down of questions, I want to know what triggered this.”

* * *

He feels calmer, detached even, after cryo. Everything is muted, far away, and he goes through the motions and keeps his head down. He’s on a short leash and he doesn’t really remember why, only that there’s always an agent watching him and he has to keep comms open at all times. 

He’s glad they keep his muzzle on, because it helps to remember he’s supposed to be a faceless, nameless, blank state. He obeys and he follows along where he’s supposed to go.

Pierce gives him an appraising look, and it wakens something writhing and nervous in his gut. 

“At ease Soldier, you have downtime.” he waves the guards and watchers away, and smiles broadly. It’s a deadly look. “You do what you want, be back by nineteen-hundred hours.”

He nods, and stands to attention until his handler leaves. And then… wavers. What is it he’s supposed to be doing? He tucks himself into his second favourite corner behind a storage bin out of sight and picks at the stonework. It comes loose under his fingers.

He finds the note. He follows the directions. 

He finds a captive in a terrible state.

_ His  _ captive.

Castiel, he remembers, as it all clicks back into place. Castiel the angel. He bleeds on the floor, turns blindly towards the sound of the Asset’s footsteps and groans.

“Bucky?”

“Castiel?” it feels like rocks and walls breaking to pieces inside his head, tumbling down to make way for clear air, for the harsh light of reality. He’s numb still, but it’s with shock now. How has he kept this from his handlers? And  _ why? _ And how can he stop the suffering so clearly happening in front of him?

“Bucky, let me up, you must. Please.”

“H-how long have you… did… does Hydra… st-status?” His brain is a rubber band, stretching and bending, it pings information back and forth until he’s not sure which line of thinking to follow.

“Bad, it’s bad. I need help. Can you… can you let me see? Please, it’s been so long. So long in the dark. I don’t know which way is up, anymore.”

He moves forward, ready to set the man free when a sharp, smug voice echoes down the stairs behind him.

“Well, well, what do we have here?”

Pierce. He’s here. He’s going to  _ see. _ He’s going to  _ know. _

He was followed — of course he was — and it’s all over. 

“Who is that?” Cas demands, but it’s croaky and weak, and he coughs as he spasms in his restraints. He’s half suspended, with only his legs from the knee down touching the ground and everything else held up perpendicular to the cement floor by ropes and pulleys, but his head hangs to his chest and he can’t seem to lift it.

“Who are  _ you _ ?” Pierce replies, he walks forward, steps into the light and the Asset sees the shapes of at least half a dozen men behind him. “Explain yourself Soldier.”

Damage control. He needs… he needs to contain this, or not make it worse. Or maybe he should just fall to his knees and accept the punishment?

“He…”

“Yes?”

“I…”

Pierce sighs and folds his arms. “Mission.”

“Retrieve and hide prisoner.”

“Under whose orders?”

He freezes. He doesn’t know, doesn’t remember. He shakes his head.

“Mission status, then?”

“Failure,” he says, quietly and bows his head. “Information not viable. Outcome inconclusive.”

“Perhaps your friend here can be more illuminating.” Pierce walks to Castiel and tilts his chin up with one firm hand squeezing under his jaw. “Do you have a name?”

“None that you need to know,” Cas spits.

“Oh, feisty. He hasn’t broken you yet then? I thought I taught you better than that. Soldier, here.”

He finds himself at Pierce’s feet, with a hand in his hair that drags his head up and his back straight. Three punches to his gut make him grunt in pain and he can’t even curl over to protect himself.

“What the hell were you thinking?  _ Why _ the hell were you thinking?”

“Leave him alone, he doesn’t have to answer to you!” Castiel rasps. The Asset looks up to see his head rolling as he snarls.

“I beg to differ.” Pierce spits. He digs fingernails into Castiel’s face, leaving crescent shaped welts. When his hand comes away and the small cuts sluggishly begin to heal he stops, and watches, and waits. “Well I’ll be damned, you found another one like you. Maybe you didn’t screw up so badly after all.”

“I am nothing like one of your sick experiments,” Cas says, twisting to get free to no avail. He falls still and heaves for breath, screws up his face through obvious pain and makes a small choked sound. “You should let me go, before—”

“Before what? What are you gonna do like that?” Pierce jostles the ropes and chains holding Cas in place and he whimpers, low and soft. “At least you did a good job on this if nothing else, Soldier. Now we just need to clean up your fucking mess and find out who this guy actually is, and what the hell you were holding him for.”

Pierce whistles and three men step forward, “Take him” he pushes the Asset away, “back to headquarters, the rest of you help me get this prisoner down.”

That can’t happen, if that happens it will all have been for nought. If they find out what Castiel is without the Asset’s help all his lying and sneaking will only get him into more trouble. And if they run experiments on Cas to reveal his true nature… the thought makes the Asset sick, he’s caused Cas enough pain; he has to spare him that. The rubber band inside him snaps, the cord that tethers him to stability is gone, and he loses all control.

“Wait!” he yells, rises to his feet and scurries across the room to the stash of feathers. “I can tell you, I’ll tell you what he is!”

Pierce smirks, holds up a hand to stop the other agents, and gestures toward Castiel. “This better be good.”

Castiel rocks in place as he slides up beside him and puts a hand on his shoulder. He strokes down Cas’s back, gets a whine of pain as he aggravates the unhealed lacerations.

“Hold still,” he grunts.  _ Please, don’t make it worse. _

The feathers in his hands, all four dozen of them, look pitiful covered in dust and in the dull light. They’re wrecked and crushed, and blood coats each delicate tip. With two fingers the Asset pries apart one of the cuts on Castiel’s back and jams a feather into it until it sticks straight out like a spine of a porcupine. Castiel keens, thrashes, and his breath comes in strangled wheezes.

“No, don’t.”

The Asset keeps going, feather after feather -- “ _ Stop, Bucky, stop!” _ \-- until all forty-some of them protrude from the wounds on Cas’s back and shoulders in a morbid display.

“ _ Please,” _ he moans, and the Asset stops to look at his target and sees him covered in sweat, trembling, racked with shudders. He places his flesh hand on Castiel’s arm, and rubs in comforting circles.

“What. The. Fuck, Soldier?” Pierce growls. “Are you wasting my time?”

“No! No, Sir. Look, look, see… he’s an angel.” He trails his hand over the spines of the feathers, feels the way they jar and poke into Cas’s back as he jolts every cut. Cas screams, and it’s ear splittingly loud, the lightbulb over head shatters and everything is cast into darkness.

“Fuck, get them both.” Pierce shouts.

The Asset panics, and cradles Cas’s head to try and protect him, to stave off what’s coming. He holds tight even as hands try to pry him away, even as Cas grunts in pain. They drag him bodily backwards and the blindfold pulls free and he catches sight of Castiel’s wild, blinking eyes.

“M’sorry,” he whispers, not even knowing if it will be heard over the commotion of stamping feet, orders being barked, and the ringing in his own head.

“Bucky, hold on, don’t give in. You can help us both.”

“M’sorry, sir.” He lifts his eyes to Pierce briefly, and then drowns in the blue of his Angel’s eyes as a needle in his neck turns the whole world black.

* * *

He’s been in the cell for days, woke up here after losing consciousness in the musty basement and has been left alone ever since; just a bucket and two bottles of water to keep him company. He woke stripped off his armour and it’s cold — damn cold — and the cell isn't even big enough to pace around to keep warm, it’s narrower than his arm span and not long enough to lay down in.

He sits on his haunches and thinks of Cas. Strangely, in the shiver inducing temperatures of the cell only the thought of Cas’s steely blue eyes and the way the cool light suffused his mind all those weeks ago when Cas tried to help him, keep him warm.

He wonders and worries about Cas; about what they’re doing to him, how much he might be suffering. How intensely focused on the angel are they if they’ve managed to forget the Asset for so many days?

He must sleep, because time passes in random splices and jolts. His muscles cramp and he massages them away in cycles as the cramps moves around his body. His stomach protests being empty and he ignores it. He just needs the door to open so he can make up for his wrongs.

When it finally does open and hands haul him out, his legs are too stiff to work properly and they half drag-half carry him where they want to go. He kicks out weakly, trying to find purchase but they throw him to the floor of a brightly lit room before he manages it.

He pants on the ground, waits for orders and doesn’t dare look up.

“Bucky?” 

He startles and his eyes lift, and he recoils when he sees Castiel chained up to the ceiling.

“What did you do to him?” Castiel demands, anger colouring his words even as he sways weakly.

“We didn’t touch a hair on his head, I can promise you that,” says Rumlow’s voice. The Asset doesn’t turn to see where it comes from.

“So, now that we’re all here can we get on with this?” Pierce sounds frustrated, but maybe there’s a hint of anticipation in his words too?

“Soldier, on your feet.”

He gets up clumsily and clasps his hands behind his back. He could look Cas in the eye now, but he stares straight ahead. His brief glance showed that Cas didn’t have any new lasting injuries, so whatever they’ve been doing mustn't be harming him — they haven’t found the blade that can hurt him, and the Asset feels relief, and hopes they won’t ask him to retrieve it. But it also showed deep circles under the angels eyes and he can hear the rattling of the chains that hold Castiel as he stands there, arms extended upward, trembling.

“Tell us what you know of this man.”

He gulps. “Name: Castiel. Angel, heals quickly. Resilient to torture. No known associates.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, sir.” 

“Useless.” Rumlow snarls.

A blow knocks him to his knees and he scrambles to right himself. They knock him down again and kick him once just for the hell of it. He takes it all. It will only be the beginning.

“An entire team of your men haven’t been able to glean information or get me to speak, and yet you blame him for not knowing more?” Castiel rasps. “When his memory is altered beyond human recognition, beyond what should be endurable, you still find fault in the things he does when they’re of your own making?”

“Do we need to gag him again?” Rumlow growls.

“No, I have a better idea.”

The Asset snaps his eyes to Pierce as the chains holding Castiel lower until the angel is on his knees. Pierce walks behind the Asset and guides him forward, wraps his strong arms around his body so he’s pinned in place and presses the Asset’s crotch to Castiel’s face. He whines, and Pierce laughs into his ear.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

There’s heat definitely, as Castiel pants against his clothed cock. Rumlow appears and holds Castiel in place, keeps his head still, and there’s a smirk on his face that lets the Asset know they have worse plans than this.

“Why don’t we show your new friend how we get things done around here, and how easily you fold given the right incentive?” Pierce grunts against the back of his skull and drags his pants down; there’s a hard nudge at his bare backside and he jolts forward as Pierce laughs.

“Put your thumb — the metal one — between his teeth.”

Without thinking he complies, his arm moves and he wedges Cas’s jaw apart. The angel shouts, and it’s garbled coming from his open mouth. The Asset blinks, tries to find the blank space inside him where none of this matters, but a hand wraps around his cock and guides it into Castiel’s mouth and he can’t escape what’s happening.

They hardly ever make him feel good, and the heat and the pressure of Castiel’s tongue slides along his cock and zips pleasure up his spine until his legs buckle. Pierce wraps a hand around his throat and the other around his hips and even as the blunt head of Pierce’s cock breaches him he can’t slip away.

Pierce ruts into him, drives him forward into Cas’s mouth in short staccato jabs that have the angel gagging. He pushes back, forces himself to accept the man’s girth so he can give Cas room to breathe. Pierce squeezes his throat until he’s dizzy and everything goes slack. He only keeps his feet under him because he knows it will be worse if he collapses and they have to start over, knows they’ll punish him for not taking what they offer.

“So tight, fuck, Soldier, clench for me,” the hand cuts off his air again and he tenses. “Yeah, just like that.”

For a few minutes there’s only the sound of slapping skin, and grunts and Castiel moaning as he jostles in his chains. Rumlow holds him steady and most of the time the Asset is rammed right to the back of his throat. It’s heaven, and hell, and it digs deep down to a shame the Asset didn’t know existed.

“Let’s start again shall we, now we’ve got you on the ropes.” Pierce fucks slower, a gentle rocking rhythm that has his balls drawing up tight as he slides gently into the heat of Cas’s mouth, but never enough to make him empty.

“How do you know him?”

“Found… found him. On mission.”

“Where?”

“Negative, cannot confirm.” A city, he knows it was a city. 

“When?” Pierce cuts off his air again until he’s desperate for it, keeps moving them back and forth and doesn’t let up the pressure. “Really think, what springs to mind?”

When he gasps for air he answers without pause: “Detroit!”

“That was  _ months  _ ago, you're telling me you’ve had him stashed away for months?”

He nods, closes his eyes and tries to focus on the pain in his ass instead of the heat around his cock. Tries to hold on to why he has to lie.

Rumlow whistles and the Asset tries to hide in shame. Pierce grunts and forces him forward hard and fast.

“Who is he, why is he important?”

He shakes his head and doesn’t know how to answer; isn’t sure he  _ knows  _ any answer that means anything. He had to keep Castiel, had to understand, wanted to believe there was someone who didn’t want to control him. Castiel was always so gentle…

“Answer me!”

“Ready to comply,” he says, unthinking, willing his mind blank.

“I don’t think you’re going to get a coherent answer out of him,” Rumlow says and drags Cas off his cock. “His brain’s all scrambled isn’t it?” He shakes Cas’s head like a rag doll and the Asset whines as he tries to keep his thumb in place where it was ordered to be.

“Who are his associates, where is his allegiance?” Pierce asks, pushing forwards so the Asset’s cock slots back into the Angels mouth.

He looks down and Cas’s eyes are watering, he’s pale and spit coats his chin, his chest is red and his hands are clenched into fists. There’s a storm in his expression that make the Asset shiver.

“Unknown, could not verify,” he says, and his voice cracks. 

Cas swallows with a nod, like he’s thanking him, and it burns; it’s so good and right and it burns.  _ “Please.” _

“Please what?”

Rumlow laughs. “I think he wants to come.”

They laugh and Pierce pulls out to knee him in the balls and he screams.

“Who is he, answer me properly and you can shoot down that pretty open mouth.”

The world is a riot of colour and noise, his body a mess of conflicting signals.

“Friend! He’s a friend!”

Everything goes still, the calm before the storm, and then Pierce is yelling at him and tightening his hand like a vice, and fucking so hard he can’t help but widen his legs to ease the pressure. Rumlow shoves Cas’s face so hard against his groin he feels like he’ll bruise and the tumult rises and rises until he comes with a shout and only as he falls to his knees does he feel the wet in his ass that signals Pierce did too.

“Is that how you treat friends? Hmm? You know taking orders is all you’re good for, what the hell kind of attack dog has  _ friends?” _

“Get the prisoner back on his feet I wanna do this the other way round.”

Commotion goes on around him, and he looks up to see Cas twisting and cursing, with a dribble of come coating his chin as the chains pull him back to his feet. Rumlow comes up behind the Asset and bullies him forward until his forehead bumps Cas’s knee.

“Up, come on, up!”

A hand grabs his hair and Rumlow shoves himself inside his ass as his face is mashed against Cas’s groin. He mouths at the soft cock, breathes fast little hiccuping breaths as Rumlow settles into a pace that he likes.

“Get that cock in your mouth.”

He doesn’t wait to be told twice, but he looks up and hopes he can beg Cas for forgiveness.

“I bet you haven’t felt anything nice in a good long while, not with how he was keeping you. So how’s this, does it make it clearer what his role is here?” Pierce is speaking to Cas and the Asset lets his eyes fall closed.

Every movement from Rumlow sends him careening forward to choke on Cas’s cock as Cas gets harder slowly but surely. It feels right. Being on his knees for Hydra is always right, even though this is different. It feels like where he should be and the shame ebbs away until he’s nothing but a vessel.

_ Vessel. _

Cas said that once, said the body he used was a vessel for whatever angelic being he really was. That he wouldn’t recognise Cas now even if he had all his memories. It sounds nice, being someone else; he may be an empty blank space for other people to put whatever they like inside of, to wind up and watch him go — but he doesn’t think that’s what Cas wants for him.

Cas wanted to save him, take him away. Maybe that’s the only way he’ll ever get to be anyone else. Maybe he should have listened to Cas all along. It’s too late now, the opportunity is gone.

He comes back to the room to hear Cas’s raspy voice rebutting whatever Pierce said and Pierce laughing.

“Pain loosened his tongue well enough, let’s see if it will work on you too, we can do this all day. Everyone likes getting a chance to claim his ass, and we can leave him hanging off your cock the entire time he takes it, until you’ll beg for us to stop.”

Pierce leans in and squeezes his cheeks, reminds him to create more pressure with his month. He blinks up, and nods, and Pierce pats his head like a dog.

“I don’t beg for humans, you think your puny ideas of torment can compare to the wrath of heaven? You cannot hurt me in a way that matters.”

“We can hurt him though, and I don’t think you’ll like that much. Rumlow.”

There’s a grunt behind him and Rumlow takes his cue. Fingernails scratch at him, claw and grab and then an arm wraps around his neck. He’s fucked so hard it feels like a battering ram forced inside him. He can’t even widen his legs, can’t ease the pressure, can’t move. Just take and take and take.

_ “Stop!  _ Don’t, you animals why, why are you like this? Why hurt him?” Cas screams and it’s agony in his eardrums. Cas is upset, and he wants to be good, wants to make it so good for him.

Pierce shoves his face forward and between Cas’s cock and Rumlow’s strangling grip black darkens his vision. He goes slack, opens his jaw wide and nurses Cas’s length until there’s not enough air to make his tongue move.

They pull back, and slap his ass and he blearily opens his eyes and looks up and Cas is crying. A tear drips from his nose and lands on the Asset’s upturned face. He sucks harder at Cas’s length, the only way he has to say sorry. 

_Sorry._ _Forgive me._ _I’ll be so good. You don’t have to worry, I can take it. This is what I’m made for. You’ll see, I can make it better._

“Tell us what you are, and this can all be over.” Pierce grabs the angel’s hair and makes him arch his back and it shoves the cock further into his throat. He swallows it all, and smothers a cry as Rumlow fucks to his own orgasm.

Cas is on the brink, he feels his balls draw up tight against his chin. He swallows, hollows his cheeks, hums and presses forward until the bridge of his nose touches the flat of Cas’s stomach.

Cas heaves above him, and he feels the scrabbling of toes on the floor as he looks for a way to get space from the heat of the Asset’s mouth. Rumlow pulls out and smacks his ass and he jolts forward. 

“Finish him off, Soldier.”

Trying, he’s trying. Cas kicks away and Bucky follows, laves his tongue along the hard length and presses forward again until he can rest his brow on his angel’s groin.  _ Please let this be enough, let me be enough, I want to help, I want to help. _

When Cas comes it’s like a, oh, like a freight train, why is that familiar? Hard and fast and screaming. A screech that tears through space and time and floods his body with sensation. Hot, wet, come fills his throat in spurts and it burns but he won’t pull away. The lights flicker and someone swears but he can’t take it in, can’t hear a thing over the hum and buzz and electric crackle of energy that fills his head. It’s that cool, calm wash of sensation all over again that pushes all else out of its way. It bleeds into every part of him, breaks down every barrier in his head and as Cas screams blue light fills his vision and he’s propelled backwards so far he feels a wall slam into his back.

He blinks.

He  _ knows. _

He feels everything, remembers… all of it. 

James Buchanan Barnes.

Bucky.

Sergeant.

Prisoner.

Weapon.

He stands on shaky legs, pulls his pants up as he rises and presses his back against the wall.

Everything is distant. He feels like the sudden rush of remembering seventy-some years of existence should be disorientating but everything slots into place in his head exactly where it should be.

He’s here. 

The memories are there.

The terror and trauma are points of reference in his mind, but the here and now take precedent.

That he’s so clear headed under the weight of all his past selves must be a result of whatever miracle Cas was able to whip up

Cas, who’s chained by his raised arms to the ceiling, Cas whose eyes are crackling with blue sparks, Cas who gave him back to himself. 

The room is in chaos, Pierce shouts and starts towards him, yells the words that should be his conditioning but  _ aren't  _ anymore. He body slams Pierce’s and knocks him down, kicks him in the ribs and the head, and picks him and throws him into a wall. A guard gets in the way of Pierce's trajectory, they both go down and neither gets back up. He launches across the room, elbows an intern and a scientist with a needle out of the way and rips the chains that hold Castiel free.

The Angel turns and covers Rumlow face with one hand, Rumlow screams and then goes still and Cas drops him where he stands.

Bucky drags a cabinet in front of the door that people are trying to batter down and hauls Castiel through the adjoining room. 

“Bucky?”

He throws a look over his shoulder and nods tersely. Yes, yes he’s here, but it’s not like he’s entirely his old self, he has all the training and all the rage of three lifetimes of being kicked while he’s down and he doesn’t feel like stopping to  _ talk. _

“Later.”

“Do you know the way out?”

“I think so.”

They run and smash their way through countless rooms, as he measures the length of their strides against his mental layout of the building. There’s a couple of lesser used exits over on the western side of the building, if they can make it there they might stand the best chance of getting out undetected. The farther they run the quieter the shouts and commotion behind them become, but he’s not foolish enough to slow. Hydra won’t take it lying down that their favourite soldier and newest prisoner escape at the same time.

“You need clothes.”

“Agreed, not being naked would be preferable.”

He winces, he did that, he remembers. How he took and took and locked Cas away. But he also knows Cas didn’t rescue him back when he was in the soviet’s possession, and he doesn’t know where that leaves them; they hurt each other, they failed each other, and right now they’re all the other has.

There’s a locker room two corridors down and three rooms across and they make their way there, ducking, weaving, and hiding as people pass through the halls. Getting Cas into the clothes they find is difficult, his fingers fumble over the buttons and he wobbles on his feet.

“Cas? You with me?”

Cas nods, but sighs. “My strength is failing.”

“Seemed pretty strong back there,” Bucky says with a half-smile. “What with the healing and the badass knock-out skills.”

“You gave me a good incentive, and my powers flared brighter with the pleasure but I fear they are depleting again now. They’ve been low for a while.”

“Sorry,” he blurts out, and sinks to his knees to finish buttoning up the pants that hang loose around Castiel’s frame. “Didn’t know better, I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

“You weren’t thinking clearly, and that’s not your fault. They took that ability from you.”

“Still, kind of a dick move on my part,” he shrugs helplessly. It’s awkward having a real conversation for the first time in what feels like forever, and there’s so much about all of this that he doesn’t fully comprehend. 

“We’ve both done things to be ashamed of,” Cas says quietly. “And I know I would like the chance to atone for mine.”

“Better get out of here then, so you can make good on that.”

He stands and pulls a bullet proof vest on Cas first and then himself, then digs through the lockers and finds plain clothes to pull on over the protection.

It looks all kinds of wrong on Cas. Nevermind the bad fit, trying to hide behind someone else’s facade is so very  _ not Cas _ . He doesn’t remember what Cas wore back in the forties, just has an impression of Cas’s presence in his mind, but he knows it wasn’t  _ this _ ; knows that this is not the trench coat and suit that he favours now.

It’s like looking at Steve, changed into an outfit — and a body — that he’d never seen before.  _ Steve.  _ Fuck, no, he can’t think about Steve. Can’t think about how he let Steve down, got caught and never got free. Can’t think about how Steve is probably gone. His best friend, and he doesn’t even know how or where he lived, or when he died, or whether he ever found peace after Bucky was gone.

He knows there’s still a Captain America running around, but it couldn’t be his Steve, could it? Not after all this time? 

No, he can’t think about Steve, or else he’ll falter and it could cost both of them their lives.

He shivers, and pushes everything down deep where the panic and pain can’t get out. He feels more like the Winter Soldier with every second he focuses on the task at hand, and that’s useful, they could use a super-weapon right about now.

They move off, a little slower, and he pretends it’s so they don’t look like escaping prisoners but really it’s for Cas — who can’t seem to keep with his easy striding gait.

They almost make it to the exit before there’s a shout behind them.

“Soldier, stop! Soldier, this is an order to stop!”

He shrugs off the command and doesn’t slow down. Until he hears the words  _ “Longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak…” _ getting slowly closer and realises with each word that he's stopping in the middle of the corridor.

He pauses, and blinks and his brain wants to  _ give _ . He feels the way it wants to bend and sink and he’s frightened of it; of how easy it would be to go away and let someone else take over, let someone else give the orders and make decisions.

He hasn’t been himself in decades, hasn’t had agency in countless years. It’s too much, he can’t do it, he can’t hold on, there’s a soldier inside him that wants  _ out _ that wants to be  _ good  _ and he can’t win against a force inside his own head—

Until Cas reaches for his hand and squeezes and he jolts back into his own mind. The rubber band twangs, and he stretched, but he didn’t break. He bounces on the balls of his feet, whispers  _ three, two, one…. now. _

And then runs.

Through a door and another, and another, and Cas is as hot on his heels as he can be, determination on his face even as he’s slower, too slow, too far behind. He hears the readying of rifles, of handguns unclipped from holsters, and he wrenches Cas aside behind a door frame and slams it shut. He twists the handle until it snaps and the lock is stuck inside the woodwork.

There’s a table to pull in front of the door and they hear footsteps rattle the door as they run past. Good, they don’t know which door they went through, yet.

“How many can you fight off?” Cas asks and Bucky shakes his head  _ no. _ This isn’t the time for fighting, this is the time for hauling ass and hoping the bullets don’t reach you as you flee.

They clamber out of the window as quickly and as quietly as possible. Cas wheezes beside him and he sees the spread of blood from all the unhealed wounds soaking the new clothes and he knows a flat out run is out of the question. They’ll have to take it slow and steady, and rely on stealth to save them.

They make it out crouching between cars and rushing across open spaces as an alarm blares out constantly behind them. He doesn’t dare steal a car from the Hydra parking lot and it’s a two mile trek across open farmland and bypassing several roads before they find an abandoned vehicle to steal. Bucky bundles Cas into the passenger seat and hurries to hot wire the engine. It’s strange, knowing how to do things he doesn’t remember learning but autopilot takes over and he has it going before he has time to question how.

And then they’re driving, and driving, and driving and his eyes are on the road but his mind is somewhere else entirely. 

* * *

He only realises they’re back at the house, with the basement and the haunting shame of his actions, when Cas raps on the window of the driver’s side door.

“Are you getting out?” it comes muffled through the glass.

He nods. Disorientating circumstances aren’t new to him but he drove them here and he doesn’t remember why — he doesn’t even really remember doing it.

“-my blade?” Cas asks.

“Hmm?”

“Where did you put it? I don’t think we should waste time hanging around here.”

He looks at the bleak surroundings and agrees, they shouldn’t linger. “I’ll show you.”

They find it where he left it, stashed with the coat he had pulled from Cas’s shoulders, way back when. Cas shrugs it on with a contented sigh and the blade disappears inside his sleeve.

Bucky doesn’t ask why he keeps it there, what its importance is. It’s not his place to know. 

“Thank you,” Cas says, expression a grim line that softens at his eyes.

“For what?” He spits. “The torture? The pain? The captivity and getting you caught?”

“For keeping my things. And I stayed because I wanted to, you know that.”

“Well that’s dumb as chicken shit, you should cut your losses now and drop the dead weight.”

Cas only frowns at him.

“Me, you should leave me while you still have a chance.” He curls into himself, shrugs his shoulders up to his ears. God, he’s such a mess, such a disaster of a person who doesn’t even know where to begin being alive. All he knows is he’ll run from Hydra until the past catches up to him and kills him; he can’t envision it ending any other way.

“And you’d be okay, going off alone?”

“M’always alone. But it’s good, that way no-one else can get hurt.”

“Perhaps some people think you’re worth the heartache.”

His mouth goes dry and he doesn’t know what to say. Cas reaches for him and caresses his shoulder. He dips his head. He can’t look, he can’t allow… he can’t.

“Anything else you need here?” he asks instead.

Cas tilts his chin up and meets his eye and studies him for a long moment until he can’t help but smile back and roll his eyes at Cas's intense look.

“There you are. That’s all we need for now,” Cas says.

* * *

Once they settle somewhere -- a seedy motel with a fake I.D that Cas pulls from his pocket -- there’s an associate who Cas calls for healing. It takes them two days to show up. Two days of waiting and watching the clock tick by while they sit with the T.V crackling for background noise and two days of Bucky feeling less and less like he knows what to do next.

He waits on the other side of the motel room looking at his shoes while Cas’s friend heals him. He notices with relief Cas’s posture relax as the pain of the cuts Bucky inflicted is, finally, removed.

It takes a long conversation and several agonising minutes of the woman —  _ angel, Cas said she’s another angel _ — staring Bucky down before Cas convinces her that everything is fine and they go their separate ways.

“So, you’re all healed? I mean, even the… the worst ones?” Bucky asks as the sound of a car pulling away filters through the closed door.

“Completely. My grace couldn’t counter the injuries from my own blade. Hannah’s worked just fine.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky admits.

“Well—”

“I mean, you could have powered your way out weeks ago. Why wait until Hyrda had us both? You coulda saved us both some trouble.”

“I left it too late,” Cas sighs and half turns away. “I wanted to stay until you  _ chose _ to come with me, and by the time I realised that wasn’t going to happen I was too weak.”

“But you fixed me in the end I don’t…”

Cas levels him with a look. “It’s happened before.”

_ He remembers a cold floor, dusty concrete, the press of a body behind him. _

“Pleasure has a way of lowering barriers…”

_ He recalls the pulse of something soothing surging through him even as he hated every second of the experience. _

“...and in this case drawing out the last reserves of energy I had. Once I realised I… I took advantage of it. I harnessed it the only way I could think of, I healed you.”

_ He remembers being cleansed of every ache, then and now.  _

He looks at Cas again and sees flashes from the past but more than that he sees the man who got them out -- who fixed his addled mind and restored every memory.

“I don’t know if it’s what you wanted, I’m sorry if it isn’t. With what you’ve been through I can understand that not remembering might be easier.”

His hand twitches to reach for Cas in reassurance, but he shrugs instead. “Thanks. I mean it. I just wish you’d done it before I tortured you.”

“You didn’t consent. More than anything I didn’t want to do something else without your consent. Not that it mattered in the end.”

“It matters,” he says, and his voice his small but it doesn’t waver.

Cas hums sadly, and walks to the window to look out, as he nears the door Bucky flinches. “Don’t!”

Cas turns on him and he wilts under the scrutiny, just like always. There’s an entire world out there that he doesn’t know what to do with, but in here with just the two of them, it’s better. It’s  _ safer. _

“I won’t let anything hurt you, not anymore.”

“You gonna watch over me again?” he asks, raising his eyebrows, smiling tightly. “Turn up when I least expect it, make sure I’m not getting into trouble?”

“Bucky I don’t… I don’t have my wings anymore, not like that. I can’t fly to you wherever you are.”

“Oh.” He should have realised. “A grounded angel huh? Makes about as much sense as a guy from the forties running around in the prime of his life.”

“You  _ do  _ have a whole lifetime ahead of you.”

“Unless Hydra finds me first,” he says darkly.

“You could come with me, I know a place where you’d be safe.”

“I have.” He stops, clears his throat, starts again. “I have things I have to do, I think.”

“Great things, I imagine.” Cas says with a rue smile. Bucky narrows his eyes and glares until they both break out into a short peels of laughter. 

“Still believing that old schtick are ya?” 

“I believe in people now. In what they can achieve, what they are capable of. Their resilience. Their kindness. Humans are better than most angels put together.”

Bucky squirms and gets to his feet, swings his arms as he prowls the perimeter of the room. “I’m not. I don’t think you can count me as one of the good guys, not anymore, not after… everything.”

“I believe in  _ you _ , James. The you beneath all the crap Hydra put into your head. I should have stopped it all years ago and I didn’t know that I could choose to do that. I’m glad I learned and changed, so I could see what you’ve become.”

Cas walks over to touch his shoulder and he holds himself very, very still. Will he ever be used to touch again? Ever, really, trust again? Ever not be primed to fight and lunge and  _ get away _ ?

“You’ll do the right thing. You’re a better man than I,” Cas says quietly.

He isn’t sure that’s true but he wants to believe it. 

* * *

They move motels, change cities twice, and Cas becomes restless. He takes phone calls that he answers out of earshot and comes back looking chagrined and solemn. Bucky makes plans, maps out possibilities in his mind. He knows travel routes and Shield compound maps like they’ve been programmed into him — maybe they have been.

He could turn himself in, if he wants to find out about the probably-new Captain America, find out how or when he took over from Steve. But he watches Cas and it’s freedom he sees in the angel, the freedom to do and be something else; he doesn’t want to get locked away and never see the light of day again, and Cas can’t come for him this time.

So he’ll keep his freedom, and he’ll go about finding his intel covertly, as much as he can.

“My friends are asking for me, I should really go to them. It’s a two day drive. Are you sure you won’t come with me?” Cas asks.

Bucky shakes his head: “Not yet.”

They sit side by side on the double bed, barely touching but mirroring each other in their pose and their hands inching closer together.

“I don’t want to say goodbye,” Bucky says. “Will you… can I sleep again? And then you can go while I’m not aware of it?”

“If you think that would help.”

“It would. I think… I think it will.” That’s how it goes between them, isn’t it? That feels right.

“Then yes.” Cas leans over and his right hand slips into Bucky’s while his left brushes Bucky’s long hair aside. “Sweet dreams.” 

The last thing he feels is the soft press of gentle fingertips, and when he wakes he’s alone again. 

Alone except for a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it, in his closed fist.

* * *

_ Eight months later _

He rolls up to the address on his motorcycle, his heart fluttering in his chest. For the long drive up the small side road he couldn’t see that there was anything to head towards and wondered if Cas had given him the wrong information; until he rounded the bend and saw a large facade buried in the hillside.

He gets off the bike and stashes it next to railings that lead down steps to a metal bunker door.

Underground.

Hidden.

Secret.

Safe?

He tries not to think about all the ways this could go south. Tries not to think about never coming back up into the light again. Tries to ignore the flashes of memory from the soviets prisons.

Ironic, really, because the one bright spot in those days was Cas, and it’s Cas he’s here to see now. Cas who doesn’t know he’s coming. Cas who has always been so patient, and so forgiving, and so…  _ there _ . Always there.

Eight months was a long time to go without seeing him, when he was the only thing Bucky felt like he knew in all the world. Hydra is gone now, or at least broken down into pieces that scattered in the wind. He saw Steve, miraculously still alive, he helped in the small way that he could.

And he’s here now, and there’s nothing to stand in his way except his feet that don’t seem to want to move.

He breathes. He exhales. His steels his nerves, and walks down the stairs… and knocks.

It’s not Cas who answers the door, it’s a tall man in a flannel shirt with a gun and hair almost as long as Bucky’s. Bucky won’t enter until he goes to get Cas, but the man smiles and shakes his hand when Bucky explains who he is, and hurries off.

Rushing footsteps signal their return and he barely gets a look at Cas’s face before he’s smothered by beige coat and firm arms. Cas  _ hugs  _ him. Cas  _ is hugging him _ .

He slowly wraps his arms around Cas too and huffs a laugh against the shoulder digging into his chin.

“I’m glad you came,” Cas says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (To skip the HTP portion of this chapter stop reading at this line: the chains holding Castiel lower until the angel is on his knees.
> 
> You can begin again here: He blinks. He knows.
> 
> The important plot points that happen therein, are that Hydra force Cas and Bucky on each other in a bid to get them to reveal who Cas is. Bucky reveals that he thinks of Cas as a friend, and realises Cas has always cared about his wellbeing more than anyone else present. As Cas reaches the height of pleasure his powers return enough to have an effect on Bucky.)
> 
> Well, that's it folks! I really hope you enjoyed this, please do let me know with a comment of a kudos if you did. 
> 
> I had so much fun writing (and whumping) these two, and I'm already tempted to do more with them, but I wanted to leave this open ended so we can all imagine them getting to know each other again in whatever way we like... 😊


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